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The Central Market of Kuala Lumpur

I love the way "Pasar Seni" sounds. The name of the Kuala Lumpur Central Market is music to my ears.
Wandering in there, perhaps sipping coconut milk is one thing every traveler must try... when in KL.
Here's what I experienced...

I warmly recommend you to check it out. It's close to many attractions, hotspots to which you can head afterwards or, come from...
For instance: Jalan Petaling, Medan Pasar, Dataran Merdeka (Merdeka Square), Masjid Jamek.

The street name where you can find the Central Market (Pasar Seni) is the Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock (love the way that sounds, wowie!).

It's very easy to get there.
The Pasar Seni LRT station is the closest one, but plenty of bus stations surround it as well (buses stunk and were filthy, I must warn you!).

This market was established in 1888 and rebuilt in 1937. Today it's a World Heritage site.

There is a main building and there are lots of other small shops and street stalls and honestly - In my confusion I even missed the "market building".
Well,"the market" is officially the main building, but activity spread to a vaster area...

From shoe sellers to a KFC restaurant and from street coconut sellers to a honey and related products seller, I saw countless businesses... It's really worth taking the time to look around. So, I did returning subsequently, mostly to window shop.

Street merchants at Pasar Seni sell all sorts of products: fresh fruits, locally-made delicacies.
Of course, of course... the cheap sporty polyester clothing, mostly fakes are also present in an abundance... But it's actually Chinatown at Jalan Petaling that overflows with the "cheap junk" and trinkets.

I walked around, looked around to find myself something to buy 'n' try...

At first I was quite worried about food product hygiene (having seen how they prepared street food in the Masjid Jamek area, particularly on the Jalan Melayu street), I was scared off quite easily...

I couldn't help myself, I just had to try one of those fresh green coconuts!

Honestly, it was my first time ever to drink from a fresh green coconut. It was fantastic!

Many years ago, I did crack my own brown (stale) coconut back home, but the flavour of the milk was nowhere close to this fresh one's.

The seller lady hit it with a machete-like knife (perhaps indeed a machete) to crack it open. The crust was amazingly thick...

The fresh, almost clearly transparent coconut milk tasted a lot better than in those stale brown nuts that you can buy from supermarkets.

There was so much milk in the green nut that it took quite a while to sip it out and it finally gave me a full, heavy belly.

Overall, the Pasar Seni experience was more like a sightseeing experience than one about shopping.

My love for architecture had me spinning around, shooting my camera almost constantly.

Some Pasar Seni's buildings are painted in extremely vivid colours, probably also for the sake of attracting clients and making the streets more appealing to visitors.

Part of the Central Market is actually a covered street area - which reminded me of the nearby Chinatown.

By the way, the Petaling Street (home to Chinatown) is a very short walk away (slightly more than 200 m away!). It's a much bigger, but different type of market, which you should also visit.

By the way, the covered street area is part of the street called Jalan Hang Katsuri.

Of course, walking on it once wasn't enough... it's a bit short too, a fast walk consumes a single minute only.

When inside the Central Market's huge blue building I encountered various small shops, including this bee-related products seller... (I said bee-related, to avoid "honey-related", because they sold a wider variety of products than just the ones directly derived from honey).

As I walked across Pasar Seni for the first time, I was surprised how close Medan Pasar is! (Having arrived from the opposite direction).

Behold...

After this, I had one more day in KL and I chose to visit Putrajaya, stopped by at Bukit Bintang and spent the late evening at Aquaria in KLCC.

Below you can admire more photographs of the Kuala Lumpur Central Market.

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