The Wet Market

At the top of my list for adventure when I’m in the Philippines (any Asian country, really) is wandering through a wet market. The inputs feeding into you there can be overwhelming at first.

First and foremost, the great discordance of sound created by the market as a whole feels less like something heard and more like something encountered, closer to a wall than anything else. Once you step inside, everything arrives in a rush: hundreds of voices talking at once, knives and cleavers thwacking cutting boards, cubed ice pouring into bins, the bustle of traffic still reaching in from the streets.

Visually, it’s no gentler. Displays rise vertically and stretch horizontally, each one asking for your attention. I’m drawn to the fruits and vegetables, bright and varied, many of them unfamiliar to those of us confined to the Rocky Mountains. The fish and meat section can be more challenging for anyone accustomed to thinking of chickens, fish, and four-legged animals as things that begin and end in tidy packaging. Here, their parts hang in displays like trinkets on a macabre charm bracelet. Fish are stacked into shining heaps. Everything is being reduced, piece by piece, as you watch.

And the scents refuse to settle. They shift and layer as you move along, never letting you land on any one thing for long. Fruits and vegetables offer sweetness and earth, while the meat and fish press in with something heavier. You are reminded of damp stone, of overturned soil.

Given all of this, I love the wet markets. This is honest stuff. Life without the courtesy of packaging.

Vegetables

Fish on Display

Fish Up Close

—Mitchell Hegman