London Day 2: The Smithfield Market

We woke up really early in the morning like 6 am London time due to the time difference and with time to kill before our ride to Paris, we visited Smithfield Market. Now, we thought that the best place to see the local people & their culture would be at the wet market. Well, we thought right, but it was on a wrong day.

It was the wrong day not because it was rainy, cold & wet. It wasn't also because we walked something like half a mile before we realised that we'll never get there (Like Japanese maps, British maps are unreliable according to actual distance), & we took a bus in the end. Nee's Hush Puppies got so wet that they started opening a hole at the front of her shoe. No, despite all these, they were not the reason for the wrong day.

We could have endured all of the above. It was the wrong day to go to the market because it wasn't opened! Someone told us that the market might not be open that day, but that defied our logic (what market only opens during the weekend????), so we thought we were smarter. Well, hello, obviously we were not locals.

There were not much activity there at the market. It was slow. In fact, it was slower than slow. This is what you say when something is slower than slow.

That's right. Dead slow.

Nothing was open, except for the meat market, which was ..... closing. And as we just picked the closest market in the map to our hotel, this is actually a Wholesale market. So on normal days, we would not be able to do much too.

So in the end, we only had a history lesson as a consolation.

The wonderful thing about London is that almost every building & place had a history of it own.

And the history of these places are much way way way older than the nations of Malaysia, Australia, Canadia or the US. It really makes you think again the significance of their history in relation to ours.


Imagine back in those days, people openly carry out executions in public places for all to see, including young children. In today's ratings, that'd be SG18 (Exreme Violence).

And the selling of one's wife at the market would deserve an SX18.