Get your Wellingtons and take a rare peep into the nation’s largest wet market. Pasar Borong Kuala Lumpur (Selayang Wholesale Market) is seldom seen by outsiders because it comes alive only at 3 am. The place is wet, slimy and buzzing when the country is fast asleep. To get a semi-fisheye view, I held the camera as high as the towkay (boss). This is only a quarter of the market. Yes. It is that big. Photographed with the Olympus OM-D and Pana 7-14mm ultrawide lens.
I smiled when a gentle dragonfly guided me to a stream earlier. I smiled again when I viewed the picture later to see that the clouds have given it the thumbs-up, too.
Imagine a nuclear detonation. Visualise the damage and destruction from the resulting shock waves. Roofs and windows on every building are blown out. What is left standing are skeletal concrete structures that withstood the blast. When the dust, debris and thermal radiation settle a bit, survivors (if any) see a silent, eerie ghost town.
But it wasn’t a nuclear detonation. It was a swamp of locusts at work. They descended on the area, stripped every metal structure or parts with military precision. From window frames, roller shutter doors to cable trunking. Even wiring inside the walls and ceiling were yanked out. But the locusts weren’t insects. They were human scrap metal scavengers or besi buruk collecors, as we call them. Now; imagine you are the helpless owner stuck with an unsellable, unrentable property saddled by a hefty bank loan. Financial apocalypse for certain.
Photographed on location at the part-abandoned township of Bandar Armada Putra, Pulau Indah.
