November 09, 2008

271206 morning market outside Wat Phonexay

The fresh food market along a lane that runs parallel to & in between Sisavangvong Road & the Mekong riverside road, with Wat Phonexay at the southwest end & the back of the Royal Palace Museum at the northeast end...degree of freshness ranges from alive & still kicking/wriggling & even staring to still walking not long ago to KO-ed to freshly drained from circulatory system to chopped up earlier that morning to knocked out of a tree by slingshot/yanked out from vegetable plot/riverbed the day before to dried, salted or pickled.

Produce is spread out on banana leaves, tarp sheets, sacks & mats on the ground or wooden tables along the lane & a few of the side alleys. Guesthouses, hotels & restaurants source some of their produce from this place, some cooking classes bring students here for an introduction to the ingredients of Lao cuisine, & cats with an interest in Biology come here to take a look at the biodiversity:

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Red-whiskered bulbul aka. burung merbah telinga merah, kept as a songbird in Singapore:

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Bats:

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Ruak ruak aka. white breasted waterhen:

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The cat sometimes spots one or two ruak ruaks running around the Portsdown Road area on its way to work, & like the red-whiskered bulbul, they are not eaten in Singapore...kinda weird to see them for sale in this state. Ditto for the white-rumped sharma aka. burung murai batu (bottom right with longest tail):

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More birds here, & also squirrels, more squirrels, bamboo rats, & field rats:

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Class reptilia also represented by this, this & this, amphibia by both cooked & uncooked versions, & catfood by this & this. Some of the stuff on offer look like a job for forensics experts. Molecular developmental biology lectures on gap, pair-rule & segmentation polarity genes come to mind with this example of class insecta - some things about nature are just so beautifully elegant.

Not sure what these are:

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For making temple offerings:

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Life at this market starts even before 6:00AM, so the tables & pushcarts at the southwest end are where those hoping to buy freshly steamed sticky rice for offering to monks & novices can find what they're looking for.

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