Hello from Penang, Malaysia! Where street food is omnipresent, nutmeg is a juice, and the butchers hide their pork. Yep.
As in many Southeast Asian countries, butchers hack up and proudly display their meats in local wet markets. You squeeze past them down the aisle, carcasses hanging inches away from you. Unlike most Southeast Asian countries, however, the pork butchers in Malaysia are hidden away, segregated from other vendors, in a porky ghetto. That’s because unlike most of Southeast Asia, Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country. It is also a cultural mishmash of a country, more extreme than any other I’ve visited. So while there are Muslims throughout Malaysia (mostly Malay, South Indian, and Southern Thai), there are also huge populations of Chinese and other ethnic groups who, well, freaking love pork.
So walking through the wet markets, you immediately spot the lamb and beef butchers with their butcher blocks and cleavers, the chicken butchers with their cages full of live poultry waiting to meet their destiny, and the fishmongers, all with their meat proudly displayed inches from you. And no pork in sight.
Take a turn, pop over to another street, peer into a shophouse, and there it is. Delicious pink pork. In a spotlight of sunshine, but hidden away from the others.
For a more in-depth explanation and discussion of Islam, and pork, and markets, hop on over to Eating Asia.
We didn’t notice this until you mentioned it, but you’re absolutely right. In Melaka, there was a shophouse butchering over a dozen hogs literally right across the street from the mosque. Compare that to Hanoi, where we saw a guy on the sidewalk butchering a hog on the back of his motorbike!