One of the wonderful things about South East Asia is that nearly everything is done out of doors in a bustling, hustling sort of activity. The drilling chatter broken by the clanking spatulas against iron woks, cut with the hiss of hot metal squeaking against water or oil as the meats and vegetables are seared in smoking pans. Steam from boiled kettles billows in clouds as roce or egg-noodles are dunked into the roiling waters, lit by charcoal braziers or more modern gas cannisters. People belching basso profoundo, clearing their choked throats and nasal passages and spitting their sputem onto the floor. Inbetween these necessary activities deft chopstick dividers deliver food into gaping mouths with effortless ease. The noisy wet chomp of open mouthed mastication, with spittles of food hurtling past your ears as people eat and talk with the same voice and the gentle lazy wandering of the fussier folk, eyeing up the wares.

Huge, colourful plastic tubs festoon the narrow corridoors between stalls in which busy haunched vendors soak, wash and rinse and clean the vegetables. Sluiceing pipes where live fish gape helplessly in an overcrowded tub, one minute a flicked-tail flash of silver and the next gleaming dead-eyed dull and barbecued on the plate.

As the people mill and throng among the busy stalls, motorbikes and cars jammed crammed together, trishaws ringing their bells for customers or perhaps just for something to do. Frying oysters sizzle as kettles of water come to boil rattle their anger before their fury is drawn into china pots to brew green tea or strong smelling Malaysian coffee. Clay pot chicken rice, crabs, lobster curries, laksi, people forking long strand of ghostly white rice noodles into their mouths while talking at the same time and I wonder how they don't choke with their furious meal. Garlics, gingers, barbecued roasting spits of meat fill the air with their cloying sweet fats, cut with the frying spices smeared over their skins in a heady muddled aroma.

People stuffing huge gobbets of lard-like foul smelling Durian fruit in a countenance of astonishing ecstasy, a bewilderment for me, for the king of fruits and I are no easy bedfellows.

Butchers whetting their cleavers with water and some sort of pumice stone, the rasping slick motions sounding like finger nails scraped keenly down school blackboards. And behind the muezzin calls the faithful to their knees, but none here in the food market pay any heed as they tear around their business of dinner.

Like slow sailed ships, beggars drift in and out and inbetween the stalls and the milling hubub, the blind led with a gnarled hand on the shoulder of a sighted companion, and everyone gives something to these unfortunates, be it small change or food scraps.

Among the stalls selling chicken and fish porridge, or fish-head curries and char koay-teow, there is strangely barely a smile to be seen. This is a busy place, and there is seemingly little time for a crooked corner smile, or an upturned lip-twist amid this sullen, flashing fury of culinary endeavour. Penang lacks the charm, the smiles and the easy pace of Thailand or Laos, here everything seems to be chop-chop-busy-busy-work-work-bang-bang.

As I watch between the lenses of a beer and a steaming bowl of noodle soup, I see a vendor tossing noodles in a one handled colander before dosing them with gollops of soy and forking them apart with the slick skill of an artisan with huge long chopsticks. His eyes never leave the noodles as he negotiates the price, touts for more business and delivers his promise in one fluid stageshow.

I can and do, sit here all day and watch this roiling miasma of frenetic humanity wrap around me, the only white man here, but within five stared, curious minutes I'm a stranger no longer, but just another piece of the furniture in a flexing landscape that unfolds beneath my wondering gaze like an unfinished symphony of colour, smell, sound and undirected yet inexorable purpose.

And everywhere people stand and slurp on straws stuck into plastic bags of sweet syrups poured over crushed ice. Steamed cockles, fatty minced pork or beef wrapped in a dark green pyramid of banana leaves, bowls of milk thin soups with stomach and intestines simmering ghostly, whitely at you, buckets of soaking beansprouts, mountains of piled high noodles, vast glooping jars of strange looking fermented mushrooms all assault the senses.

Opposite me, a newly sharpened cleaver, glittering wetly in the few specks of sun that force their way through the pollution,appears to be carving thin slivers of bone off a knuckled sheep leg, while her partner works the wok swiftly and furiously.

Sticky sticks of satay, pork or chicken, the peanut wafting and mingling with the host of other smells - you could eat here for the rest of your life and never tire of the offerings proffered before you.

Woks, smoking hot, huge vats of golden oils; rape, sesame, corn. The wok handlers scraping off the burnt carbons with a fistful of bamboo bristle-sticks before washing the pan with a sizzling hiss of steaming fresh water and then back to the cooking. Egg crackers, snapping the thin shells and whisking up tempura batters for prawns or small squiggly fish while wide bladed spatulas scraped at ribbed griddles with one hand, the other dipping ladles into oils; chilli, soy, nam-pla. Racks of barbecued quail, fat sausages leaking beads of sweating fat, dripping onto and basting the sides of ribs, chicken legs and wings roasting below.

The day as usual, is worn long, and as the dusk falls somewhere behind the choking clouds of pollution and the daylight dims, the sound of the neverending clatter of metal spatuals against metal woks and the milling hubub of the throng seems to grow more intense in the smoky twilight. And finally I roam to bed, a full stomach and the memory of an entire afternoon just watching another world walk by.

yechydda,

Note:

The wok vendors here only ever cook for one person at a time, something that has become apparent to me in my travels. Many amateurcooks fail to understand in the West. You cannot cook a meal for four in a wok, it's that simple. This was the secret I learned when a street vendor allowed me to cook food for customers on the streets of Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. She wouldn't let me anywhere near her regulars, but when there was a passing Ferang looking hungry she disaprovingly let me try out my skills. I learnt what I should have always known of course, for wok food, everything must be prepared before hand, cut into similar bite-sized chunks. The wok must be smoking hot to seal the food quickly, the noodles pre-cooked refreshed with cold water and the dunked breifly into a large pan of boiling water before added to the wok.

The things that take longest to cook are added first, the rest later, and all the time the food must be kept moving swiftly, to prevent it catching and burning, tossing the pan from time to time to make sure that everything is heated through. If cooking for a large number of people, pre-cooking the meat is a good idea. After each 'serving' throw a cup of hot water into the wok and scrape clean before returning the wok to the heat and allow the water to evaporate before adding more oil and starting the process anew.