camden market

yesterday, i had an appointment with some jc friends to visit camden market. after waking up at 9am to get some groceries from tesco (and the open air market outside), i had a nice long walk down to camden town to meet up with the rest.

the good thing about camden town is that it's in zone 2. for those who are not familiar, the transportation network in london is divided into zones, with zone 1 being central london and the other zones being concentric cirles around. so, since camden town is outside the incredibly expensive zone 1, prices are generally cheaper. it isn't like dirt-cheap though (after all it's still london), but food prices in general (sans the major chains like macs and bk) are around 50p - 1 quid cheaper.

camden market is like one mega huge pasar malam. rows and rows of stalls line the main walkways and sidewalks of the area, selling all sorts of stuff, from clothes to photographs to bean bags to food (naturally). of course it was incredibly crowded as well, given that it is a tourist attraction in its own right.

one kind of food stall that was ubiquitous around camden market is the chye png stall. they have several cuisines for the chye png stalls, chinese, thai, indonesian, indian and even mexican. but the concept is essentially the same amongst the different stalls; for a fixed price (4 quids) you get to choose a starch staple (fried rice or noodles) plus a few dishes (except for the mexican chye png which uses tortillas instead). it is served in a square container (approximately half the size of a standard styrofoam box in sg) and a fork. so for more than twice the price in sg you get half the amount. welcome to the suck.

so we strolled along, and eventually headed off to hc's place for some ps3 action before going to a pub to watch the man u match against aston villa. it was freezing when we got out of the pub at 7pm. even though i was just standing stationary at the bus stop (no relative wind velocity to decrease the heat loss), my ears felt like they were going to drop off. over the past few days the temperature in london has dropped quite significantly. seems like the winter is kicking in.

anyway some trivia i heard on the bus: apparently teenage mutant ninja turtles was previously called teenage mutant hero turtles because the word ninja was banned from uk tv. how weird is that, from a country where beer is catered during lunch receptions in school.