I don't feel like chicken tonight!

We’ve landed in the most bizarre of townships where the melodic call to prayer and chants alternates with crackling announcements of bus arrivals over loud speakers dotting street corners.

Jam packed, these streets amass with every conceivable type of vehicle;   trucks, bikes, cars, peddling rickshaws draped in swaths of plastic and silk flowers, push barrows overloaded with green vegetables, mobile kitchens on backs of scooters selling satay sticks and soups,  all vying for room with the faithful in their skull caps and white cloaks going to prayer; the beautifully dressed women in ornate head scarves, colourful  tunics and delicate heels heading off for a day of shopping or work; and hawkers selling curry coated peanuts, palm leaf wrapped nibblies and iced drinks in iridescent colours.  

Add to the cacophony of noise and mayhem, thousands of birds, small swallows, flittering about, swooping and filling the sky above, shrieking loudly.  They fly into the building rooftops, some of which have special metal lined openings and nesting areas for them.  From there the chirping echoes and melds into constant chatter that pierces the ears and rattles the senses.  They never shut up.  

It appears this city, Kota Bharu, adores their feathered friends.  A look at the calendar of events for the year shows a number of dates for bird fancying -  there’s two Bird Singing Contests and a Serama Chicken Beauty Contest.  On the map of Kota Bharu (or KB as it locally known) there’s a whole area set aside – the bird singing arena – which sits near KB’s Chinatown. Some of the buildings and shopfronts leading to this area are hung with cages, some with birds in them, some without, and where there’s not a real bird, there’s an overabundance of fake ones. 

But it’s not for the birds that’s brought us to this intensely chaotic town located almost on the boarder of Thailand.  No we’ve come for the market which according to LP "is one of the most colourful and active" in Malaysia. 

Big M and I are lovers of markets, especially “wet” markets where the unfathomable visual, smell and texture of what is food sends the senses reeling almost into the stratosphere. It’s not always a good thing to visit these places as it can put you off ever wanting to eat once you have witnessed where the ingredients  have been sold or prepared but the intrigue is too great for us to ignore.  The book is not wrong, this market turns out to be more than just colourful and active, it really is sensory overload.