Reality - Malaysia

Chinatown Night Market, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Watches good quality

Sunglasses, very cheap

A bag for your wife?

A bag for your girlfriend?

Spring rolls and Tiger kecil

Surrounded by Indians, customers last stand

Chop chop Chinese slurping on shark fin soup

Rolling thunder as mobile stalls trundle by

Malay women in head scarves bump barely clothed backpackers bouncing off veiled black burkhas

Tattoos for fashion

Tattoos for protection

Tattoos for identification

Tattoos for aggression

Market wanderers weave as if they’re missing one high heel

Never a more crooked line walked

Spitting young cobras vie for the attention of dusky maidens

TV wrestling has caught both eyes of the waiter’s attention

Business is slow in the warm fine drizzle

Every mobile phone has an ear attached

Another beer? A fine idea.

A man stands in the rain bedecked with a pink plastic bag as a bonnet

Stalls start to implode as the evening grows longer

Smiling works wonders in the sea of faces

My taxi driver gave me a cheap trip, I was the night’s first fare

A monk explained his amulets, because I showed interest

A customs agent invited me for coffee to chat about music

Last night I felt I’d meet someone I knew out of the blue and then I did

A quick chin wag with a Nepalese fellow who has been in KL for 4 years

He’s noticed that Vietnamese women are very beautiful but have terrible teeth

But where do all the stalls go? They vanish down laneways secreted into the dark

To slumber the day away

Where would I rather be?

Friday night watching footy or Friday night watching life

Reality TV aint nothing on reality

Yesterday Indonesia, today Malaysia, tomorrow Vietnam

It certainly aint dull this life I’ve chosen

Now the hard part, getting home.

-Adam Martin - 28 March 2008