Hey all!

So I went to the Richmond Night Market (the one near Bridgeport station on the Canada line), and I blew a fortune on food.

For those of you who don’t know, the night market is a place where lots of stalls are set up and rented away to vendors to sell their merchandise. You get a lot of asian clothes, jewellery, and even the occasional apocalypse supplies stall. The goods they sell are relatively cheap, and you get a taste of Asia. Then, there are the food vendors.

To be honest, a lot of people only go to the night market for asian food. If you’ve ever been to Hong Kong or its surrounding cities in Asia, you can guess what these food stalls look like. They’re very much like street food you’d find in HK, except here, it’s concentrated into 3 lines of stalls. It’s jam packed with people, but you also find amazing food prepared right in front of your eyes. Downside? You end up spending a fortune because everything is in small portions and it takes a while for you to get full.

So here are some of the things I ate yesterday…

Oikos gave out free yogurt! At first, I stopped to see why everyone was lining up for yogurt. I mean, of all things to eat at the night market, you’d wonder why anyone would get yogurt. But then I realized that Oikos is found in supermarkets, so that would be like Nestlé opening a stand at the night market– which didn’t make sense. And then we found out they were giving away free yogurt.

This year, the night market near Bridgeport had a duck theme– probably as tribute to the giant floating duck stopping by Hong Kong. It was cute, but a bit random. And very hard to explain to people why they chose that theme. I tried with my friend, beginning with “Well, you know, Asians, ducks….” I kind of trailed off because I didn’t know how to end that sentence. But regardless, we took a few pictures with these culturally themed ducks, as well as the huge inflatable one.

They do have a competition going on where you can win a trip to anywhere in the world. They also have a wishing well for anyone who wanted to pay $5 for a duck, all proceeds going to the BC Cancer Foundation. Like the other night market, they too had performances. We saw some fire dancers there, and some musical acts. Oh talking about music, they have the most interesting choice of songs blaring on their speakers around the market. It’s all very diverse, jumping from English songs, to Korean pop music, to Chinese ones.

Bring plenty of cash if you’re going, because it is cash only! Go on an empty stomach if you want to try as many of the stalls a possible, but go on a decent one if you don’t want to go broke. Reminder that admission is $2! I almost forgot we had to pay to get in because I was so used to the old night market where it was free!

-Karen