VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
The 5-Snack Challenge is a time-honored Planet Doug tradition. I walk through a market or a food street and by the time I reach the end, I MUST have tried at least five snacks. It’s just a fun technique I came up with to force myself to try some of all the amazing food and drink options that are available. Otherwise, I might walk through an entire market shooting video or taking pictures and not try a single thing.
And for this 5-Snack Challenge, I set my sights on the famous Taman Connaught market in Kuala Lumpur, said by many to be the longest market in Malaysia. Setting aside any debate about its actual length, it is certainly a special night market as it appears only one night a week: on Wednesday night. You’ve got to plan ahead and be there on a Wednesday night, or you’ll miss it.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Planet Doug, and tonight we are doing a five snack challenge here at the Taman Connaught Market. This is a very special market here in Kuala Lumpur. It only happens one night per week, Wednesday night. So, this is a Wednesday night, and they take this street behind me and they close it. They shut it down to traffic, and it becomes a long market. There’s a little bit of a controversy about how long it is. It’s known to be, people call it the longest market in Malaysia. Some people say it’s one of the longest. People say it’s 1 km long. Other people say it’s 2 km long. I did a little bit of a test on Google Maps right now, and to me, based on Google Maps, it’s 1 kilometer long, but I don’t know for sure. But yeah, there it is, there, stretching all the way down this street, all the yellow tents that you see.
And I’ve got my friend Jamie here. He’s over there. He is miked up, so you will probably hear his voice at some point. So, the way the five snack challenge works is that, well, the rules are pretty simple. I walk through a market, and by the time I get to the end of it, I’m done with the market experience, I have to have had five snacks. And they can’t just be any snack. It has to be something that just sort of catches my eye. And I started the five snack challenge because I realized I would often go to morning markets, night markets, and I walk through the market, and I see things, and I think, “Oh, oh, I wonder what that is.” Or, “Oh, look at that. That looks interesting.” But by the end of the market, I haven’t actually tried any of those snacks. I notice them, but it seems like it’s too much trouble to stop and figure out how much it costs and order it and eat it, and you get sticky fingers. So, I end up being more like a photographer or videographer. I’ll go through the whole market, film everything, take pictures of everything, but at the end, I haven’t actually eaten anything. So, the five snack challenge now is to take that impulse of, oh, I wonder what that is. And if I have that impulse, something out of the corner of my eye, huh, I wonder what that, then I have to try that snack. So, Jamie, I explained the rules of the five snack challenge. Do you know what they are? Yes, I do. All right. So, we’re just going to go for a walk and then see what catches my eye.
Jamie and I made it all the way to the end of the market, and I can now report definitively it is not 2 km long the way it is now. Maybe it’s longer on the weekend, but this week, oh, no. It’s always a Wednesday night, I think. So, it’s always the same night. It’s about 700 m from here to the beginning where we came in. So, less than 1 km. But I was just saying to Jamie, it feels much farther because it’s kind of a narrow crowded area, and you’re moving so slowly looking at all the food. So, I can see someone going through it and going, “Wow, that must have been 2 km long.” But call it 1 kilometer, 700 m. So yeah, so I walked through, and I don’t know about this five snack challenge because I’d have to up it to like 20 snacks. I mean, I wanted to try everything that I saw. So that’s, I guess, but I guess we’re going to go back for the highlights for some special things that caught my eye. So, you got a couple of things already, Jamie. Yeah, I got a drink, a salted plum, salted plum and calamansi, and then this is red beans and glutinous rice dessert. I have not tried it, so it’s a dessert item, so that’s, I always go first, that’s my right as an American to eat my dessert first, yeah. I had a sip of it, and it was a little bit like salty, just kind of a surprising taste. All right, so I made a mental note of a few places, but I’ve already forgotten what caught my eye, so it’s almost like the five snack challenge is starting all over again. So, we’re going to walk back through, and we’ll see what catches my eye as we go through. Yeah, I was just saying to Jamie that my eye is usually drawn towards like fried things and baked kind of things. They really jump out at me for some reason. And Jamie had the same idea.
So, this is the very first snack in the fried snack challenge. I noticed it when I walked along. And it was the word floss that caught my eye. So, I’m going to get one of the chicken floss. So, how much are they? Four ringgit each. Four ringgit each.
And then there they are being prepared.
Thank you.
Could I have one smoked duck? I changed my mind, and smoked duck seems more exotic, more unusual. So, that’s what I’m going to have.
Touch and go. Yep. Four ringgit.
This is where the tripod could come in handy.
But if I have a fence handy, that’s what I do. It works. Yep. So, you got one as well. I got one. Yeah, bacon. That’s bacon. Bacon. Now it sounds better than mine. I went for smoked duck. Interesting. Yeah, I didn’t even see that one. I guess it looks similar to it. Actually looks like almost like an egg, like a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. That’s what it looks like. All right. Try the bacon one. Okay. Egg. And kind of, it looks like it’s, yeah, it’s heavy. It’s got some heft to it.
Yeah, that’s good. A little salty. Yep. Which I don’t mind. It really does. That feels like an Egg McMuffin. It really does, the texture, the shape.
I’m assuming for a Malaysian, they want to know where the sauce is. It feels like you need to pour a whole bunch of spicy saucy stuff on it, the chili sauce. It looks like ketchup, chili sauce. Yeah, it’s pretty plain, just eggy, an eggy muffin basically. I’m not getting any duck flavor.
There’s not, there’s not a ton of bacon in there, but I’m still getting flavor of it. Yeah, there’s the duck. The duck was in the middle. I found it.
Now the flavor is coming across. Yeah, this is the smoked stuff done. Pretty good. I like it. And I saved up my appetite during the day, so I can really appreciate this right now. The one thing I noticed, I think Jamie noticed it as well, the people here, the customers, and you said even the people selling food seem on the young side, like it’s a young, hip, well-dressed, good-looking crowd of people. I feel almost out of place, like me as well. But there’s also like a scattering of foreigners, like foreign tourists, families, and they all kind of look like us, so I feel at home. But I’m not nearly as good-looking as all the people that I’ve been seeing here, all the local young people that are here for the night. Now, it’s a young, hip crowd. And the other thing I noticed, there’s so much tiramisu for sale. I don’t think of tiramisu as being a Malaysian specialty, but I saw at least five different stalls selling tiramisu.
Snack number one. What is it called? I forget. I don’t remember if I even saw the name exactly over there. Smoked duck Egg McMuffin. That’s what we’ll call it.
I lost Jamie. He stopped to get something. Yeah, we both had our attention caught by sausages. So, I’m probably going to join him in this where he got a sausage. Yeah, the crowds are building up.
But I swear there is some sort of a model convention in town. There are so many good-looking people here tonight. I don’t know what’s going on. But yeah. So, which ones did you pick up? Got the one he’s, he has in his hand there. Okay. Big one of some kind, Thai sausage. What’s it called? Thai sausage. Oh, Thai sausage. And then we got cheese meatballs. Ooh, cheese tofu and cheese meatball. Four for 11 ringgit. Taiwan sausage. Ah, could I get two? The Taiwan sausage. You want spicy or Indian? Spicy. It’s okay.
Since I spend a lot of time in Taiwan, it caught my eye. Fits the code of the five snack challenge. You can walk in these, too. What’s that? You can walk and eat. Walk and eat. What does that mean? You can walk and eat. Oh, walk and eat. Okay. I thought you were speaking Taiwanese, but how the heck do you know Taiwanese? Walk and eat. Yes, absolutely. All right. Yeah, they got a lot of different things here, and potato-based snacks as well.
Jamie says we can walk, walk and talk, walk and eat, but he’s not the one holding a camera. It’s not as easy as that. You have to, I need, I need three arms. I need one more. So, I normally scoot to the side if I find a place. I’m going to scoot again. Maybe I’ll use my new tripod. How does that sound?
Music. Oh yeah, music.
We’re running away from the music.
Here we have the generators, but generator noise. That’s okay. How would you like to be the cameraman? Then I don’t have to get out my tripod. So yeah, I was looking at the different ones, and it said Taiwan sausage. So that’s what caught my eye. And then he said spicy, not spicy, and I said spicy is fine. But then he just grabbed two of them at random, it seemed like. So, I don’t, how do you know which is spicy and which isn’t? But apparently I got the spicy. How was yours, by the way? It’s really good. Yeah. What was special about it? Anything? It was a Thai sausage, and I’ve had something similar in Thailand many times. Had some glass noodles in it. Okay. Bit spicy.
Very sweet. Very sweet. There’s almost a marinade or something they brushed on it. I had similar.
Yeah, I’m probably asking for my own doom here, but whenever they say, do you want spicy? They’re implying like I can’t handle it. But this is not spicy at all. It’s flavorful, but it’s not, not spicy.
Good though. That’s really good.
Hard to beat meat on a stick. Yeah. Two ringgit each, I guess. Four ringgit in total.
Very good. The next snack that caught my eye is something called otak-otak. And I have a vague memory that maybe I know what it is, but I’m not sure. But it’s also from Muar. And I know about that town. So, yeah, Muar otak-otak. And he’s got three different types: fish, prawn, what is lala? Fish or lala? Oyster, small. Oh, small oyster. Could I have five lala? Lala? Yeah, five.
Okay. Okay. One. Okay, that’s good.
It’s open. Just open it that way and eat it. Okay.
[Music] Touch and go. Put my glasses on.
Thank you. All done. Here we go. Okay. Thank you. Are you from Muar?
Thank you. So, this is a complicated one for eating. So, I’m going to have to duck somewhere back here. Yeah, we can maybe scoot through there. All right. I’ve got my otak-otak. And you recognized it from before. Yeah, I’ve had it different times. Not necessarily my favorite snack. No. Okay. But it’s certainly worth a try if you’ve never had it. That’s what it looks like. And he ended up, he talked me into getting an assortment. So, I got five of them. But I don’t know which is which. Right. Yeah. Two of them are fish. Two of them are lala. And lala is like a small oyster. Okay. And then one of them is prawn. Okay. Prawn. Would you like to try one? Sure. Thank you.
All right. I need my glasses for this just so I can look at what it is I’m doing.
That’s the challenge of night markets for me. Hold the bag. What’s that? You want me to hold the bag? Oh, it’s okay. I will suffer through.
Okay. So, it’s just a little strip of something. I thought maybe it’d be on a stick that you could hold it, but I guess not. You just get in there with your fingers, and this is like flopping around. I hate to say it looks like someone took the tongue out of some poor creature. Yeah, a little bit. So, I don’t know what one I’ve got here. Let’s give this a try.
It’s got to be, well, I probably can’t tell the difference. Prawn, oyster, fish. It’s all going to taste the same to me. I wouldn’t know what to guess with that either. It’s just kind of gelatinousy and got a little spice to it. A little fishiness. Very, very fishy. I’d almost guess oyster on that one that I had, but I’m not an expert on that. Yeah, that was, that is a strong flavor. Yeah. Wow, it’s building, too. I’m going to be tasting that for the rest of the night.
Dive into another one here. Yeah, I need an L on it or a, oh, yeah. It looks like they cook it inside this, right? You can tell it’s been burned on the outside from the fire.
Oh, there’s, I’ll get in there eventually. What’s that? What’s that? Oh, it doesn’t say anything now. I couldn’t see.
Oh, this one is different. It has some green bits in it. My other one didn’t have any green bits there. See what we got going on here.
Very different. I thought maybe they’d all taste the same, but no. That first one, powerful fish. This one is very light flavor. I’m guessing prawn.
Power through. It’s not your favorite. So, one more. The last one I had might have been one of the better ones I’ve ever had. But I usually, in the past, the ones I have had been very fishy. Okay. Had that strong aroma, that strong flavor. So, that might have been what turned me off. That last one I had, like I said, might have been oyster. And that wasn’t fishy at all.
Let’s see what’s going on. This one has a little green. That has to be prawn, huh? Oh, so you got the prawn. So, you got the secret prize.
That’s the best one. You like that one? Yep. I would take that one. Yes.
So, the first one you had was probably fish. I think I got a fish one, right? It was really powerful. Mine was not. I think that was oyster. Oh, yeah. Because it was not fishy. Okay. It certainly wasn’t prawn. That would have been the only other thing, lala.
From a five snack challenge point of view, that was very successful. Something really unusual. I don’t think I’ve ever had it before. And you got to open it. I didn’t even know what the texture was. A total surprise. So, what is that? Number four. Is that snack four? I lose track all the, I think it’s three because we had the, we had the Egg McMuffin. Oh, yeah. That was the first one. And then the sausage on the stick. Free. Yeah. Okay. That’s what I want. Okay. Peanut and corn. And same. Same price. Yeah. 30. Okay.
Okay.
Two. Two. Two. Two. All right. Oh, you’re going for the whole package. Yeah. The full monty. So, two, two peanut, two peanut and corn. What are these? Peanut. Peanut. Peanut and corn. Oh, peanut and corn. Ah, that’s a lot, feeding the family back home that we don’t have. One for you, one for me. So, this one really is a walk and eat. Yeah. Here.
Wow. That’s, that’s hefty. Very heavy. I don’t know what, I got the corn. I got a corn.
But it’s got peanuts in it, too. Got both.
So, I’d like my snacks. One hand to hold the camera, one snack you can hold in your other hand. Nice and easy.
Okay. So, that Egg McMuffin we had, yeah, they’re calling it a soule here, a sule. I don’t know if it’s the same or not, but it’s similar.
Okay.
So, bit of a high energy place here for my penultimate snack number four. I guess this caught my eye on my way through, and I had no idea what it was. So, this homemade fried carrot cake, and I was looking for carrots, but I guess, Jamie says it’s more like a turnip or something. Anyway, so this is, this might be it here, the carrot cake. Yeah, it’s a very, very busy place here. Very hot and busy. But I think we can sit down and enjoy it.
Yeah, they make a kueh, fried kueh.
Yeah. And they have a little bit of seating back here. So, we’re going to grab a seat here. Jamie and I got a table here in the back, which is pretty sweet. We’re sort of back here with the gas and the generators and the exhaust, though. Feels like we’re in an industrial car park or something. But just nice to be able to sit down. And there’s the picture of the homemade fried carrot cake, and they make kueh as well.
Yeah, she’s very busy. Very popular place. She’s been powering through all of these to-go orders.
So, my homemade fried carrot cake has arrived. Still don’t really know what it is. We were guessing, could be radish and turnip or even compressed like a bean, bean curd that they, we saw them cutting cubes up, and then they fried it with bean sprouts and things like that. Yeah. There. There it is. There. And then you got your red bean. Got the red bean including this rice. Yeah. So, I’m assuming it’ll be sweet.
All right. Let’s see what’s going on here. Got myself a cube. Yeah.
No clue. It’s not vegetable, is it? Not, not crunchy. Yeah, it’s gooey, like really gummy. It’s something compressed. I almost would guess that this is not as sweet as I imagined it would be. No. No.
And I just realized we’ve got dance club music going on, but I don’t know whether the YouTube computers will recognize that as a song or just background noise. I have no idea. Just a big drum beat.
Try that.
You can tell me what it is.
No clue. I don’t know either. Tastes good. Yeah, it’s not, it’s not overly flavorful, but going to try some of this red bean concoction. Okay, I don’t mind that. That’s good. I like that.
A lot more people here now. Technically, that was snack number four if you include the ambalik from Jamie. Snack number five. So, we’re doing pretty well. Very enjoyable set of snacks. And a lot more people here as the time goes by.
And I did have my eye on a snack at the very beginning, one of the first places I saw, but I may end up giving it a miss because I’m actually pretty full. And I think that place was like a full meal. But right now, I’m sort of thinking about a drink. And when I came through here earlier, yeah, they got a traffic police here. They have to stop the traffic to let people across from time to time. But yeah, I walked by this place that had a whole bunch of coconut shakes on display.
So, basically, I think I’m going to end the evening with a cold drink. We’ll see what catches my eye.
Oh, this is the place right here. So, I think, I think that’s going to be it for me.
One coconut shake. Coconut shake.
Six ringgit. Six.
Oh, you’re getting one, too. Yeah, might as well.
So, there they are. Yeah, they were all out on display when we walked by, and that’s why they caught my eye. So, there’s the coconut shake seller. Thank you. Thank you. Nice and cold. Jamie got one as well.
Yeah, it looks like a pretty heavy duty shake. It’s got a big dollop of ice cream on the top. So, Jamie had some before I did. What do you think? Really good. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Kind of a natural coconut.
Brain freeze. Yeah, brain freeze. Yeah. All right, let me, so thirsty that I drank too much too fast.
I was expecting it to be like a thicker, shakier kind of thing. It’s almost like the coconut water juice. Yeah. Down at the bottom. Maybe if you mix it up, it would be more like a smoothie. But yeah. Yeah. It’s nice.
As always, difficult to do anything one-handed here. I kind of wanted it to be like a thick shake, like really hard to pull up the straw, rather than liquidy.
Okay. Okay. So, we’re going to walk along and enjoy this. And technically, yeah, that is snack number five. So, the five snack challenge has ended, but we may have a bonus snack. I may spot one more thing. We’ll see what happens. Yeah. So, we just got back all the way back to the beginning. All we did was walk from here 700 m to the end and back again. And I was just telling Jamie, I’m exhausted. He’s pretty tired, too. This market has kicked our butt. But it’s a really nice market. I was just telling Jamie, it’s one of my favorites now. I’ve never been here before. Really pleasant surprise. A lot of good food, good people, just a great atmosphere. I’m glad we got here early though when we did, and it was still not quite as crowded. And so we’ve seen it with less of a crowd and now with a big crowd. And as far as the snacks go, man, I have to recount them now. I started with, what did I start with? I need help here. I always forget. The Egg McMuffin, the sule or egg. Yeah, we had the Egg McMuffin sule. That was really good. Had the otak-otak. Yeah. Really enjoyed that because it was so unusual for me. The last one, the fried carrot cake, I really liked. I don’t know what it was. Yeah, it seemed a little bit like tofu, but it didn’t have the texture of tofu. No, no, no. So, it was something else, but I don’t know what. That was good. Coconut shake. Though, I got to say this is not my favorite coconut shake. I had one in Ipoh just recently, and that one was like premium, like thick, heavy shake. This is more liquidy. And in the one in Ipoh, you had like actual coconut meat all chopped up that you’re chewing on. That was a really good shake. This one not on that level, but still pretty good. Oh, we had the meat on a stick, sausage. Yeah, you had the big one. I had the Taiwan. Yeah, I had Taiwan spicy sausage and the ambalik. Ambalik was good. That was, that was good. Yeah. And anything else? Might have missed one, but that’s okay. I think that’s it. Yeah, I think that was it. Five snack challenge at Taman Connaught Market on a Wednesday night. Yeah, I think that was a success. I would call that a success. Absolutely. And I would, I mean, it’s kind of a cliché to say it, but I would come back here. Yeah, I would, I’d come back here. Night markets for me are a little bit of a, takes an effort, takes energy, you got the crowd, you got the heat, you got the noise, and, but I would come back here. I enjoyed that quite a bit.
All right. Any last words, Jamie? Nothing. That is wore out. He’s wore out. I’m wore out. We got like a 20-minute walk back to the MRT, but I think we can handle it. I think once we get out of this district, we’ll get a second wind. So, anyway, there it is. Last look at Connaught Market and the end of the five snack challenge.
But as always, there could be some extra photos and clips, thoughts on the Planet Doug Patreon. Go check that out. And also on the Planet Doug YouTube page, the posts. Go check that. I’ll see you there. See you on the Planet Doug behind-the-scenes channel. Yeah, if I don’t see you there, I’ll see you back here on Planet Doug for another video. See you then.