Night Noodle Markets

Yet again it seems I'm starting to fall behind in my quest to blog regularly. But before it gets too out of hand, here's an account of my little visit with some of my coursemates to the Night Noodle Markets at Hyde Park last Monday evening. It was all really spontaneous, we were all in our Literary Theory and Criticism class when during the tea/coffee break (yup, we English majors pause for tea and coffee!) some of us decided to go to the Night Noodle Markets, which was running in conjunction with the Crave Sydney International Food Festival. So after class we took a bus to the QVB where we got off (have you seen what they've done to the statue? they've dressed her up in horrible 'spring' clothes!), and took a little walk to Hyde Park.

I was so happy when I got there, the entire place reminded me so much of the Kuching Food Festival, y'know what I mean: hawker stalls, crowds of people, and apparently even in Sydney they reserve chairs the same way us Kuching folk do - the typical kiasu method of balancing the cheapo old plastic chairs against the equally cheapo old plastic tables (squint at the pictures and you'll see what I mean).

There was even the typical stage thingy where some group of women were doing some traditional Vietnamese dance, complete with music and costumes and inquisitive kids and all:

And then there was the food! It was mostly Asian fare, like Thai and Japanese and Indonesian. Interestingly enough, the stall with the longest queue was a Malaysian one! And what were the queuing for? Expensive nasi lemak and roti canai! Quite hilarious, seeing how the same dishes back home would be like dirt cheap!

After walking around for quite some time (took me such a long time cos I was snapping pictures!), I finally decided to get a bowl of chicken yaki soba (or was it udon?) from a Japanese stall and some Thai spicy fish cakes. We all shared the food around, so I managed to taste some deep-fried octopus squid thingy and okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) and rice with Thai chicken or pork and some Turkish pancake thingy. Pretty satisfying on the whole, but still quite expensive and not as tasty as when you actually go to the shop. Typical food fest experience.

We were quite parched after eating, so we got some booze (I had a can of Coopers Clear, quite weak). By the way, I know that judging from some of the pictures below, it might seem like we're drunk, but trust me, we weren't... We just get somewhat ecstatically silly everytime our classes are over for the day.

And then it drizzled and we had to leave but the guard won't let us leave until we'd finished our booze so we guzzled it all down beside the trash cans. And then that was that, and we all went our separate ways. It was great fun, and it reminded me so much of the food fest back home that I just kept saying how happy I was the whole time I was there. And that's it for this post! It's Monday tomorrow, which means it's a new week, which means it's another week closer to me going home... *heartbreak* And coincidentally, tomorrow would mean I have exactly 2 months left before I land on Malaysian soil again... Cheers, people!