Located across East Hastings St. from the main body of Chinatown, Asia Market is located next to the newly renovated Walton Hotel.

There are three main isles in this shop, packed with hard-to-find and/or obscure ingredients for Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai, Chinese and of course, Vietnamese cooking.

This central isle is my favorite as it is where all the sambals, hot sauces and otherwise chile-inspired ingredients from across SE Asia are to be found.

My honey & I visited at 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon, so the place was empty. We had the place to ourselves to enjoy the discovery of several new products including a belacan powder for making sambal kangkong, a stir-fried dish of water spinach tossed in spicy sambal and belacan.

Singapore curries & ingredient mixes. Hot sauces, sambals & rojak sauces.

My honey is a great cook and is always excited to shop here at Asia Market. In fact, it is here we met for the first time last year.

Indonesian curries and instant mixes, pickled chile peppers and salted, fermented fish pastes.

Turn around in this aisle and one finds a great selection of SE Asian teas, coffee mixes and sweet desserts.

Fresh vegetable, fruit and spice section. Here one can find fresh tumeric, lemon grass, galangal, pandan leaf, Calamansi limes & other hard-to-find items.

I have no idea what Zuiki Alacacia is. I'll have to search-engine it.

And now we arrive at the 'holy grail' of ingredients. Belacan -pronounced 'blachan'- (the Malay word) is fermented shrimp paste used in all SE Asian cuisines. It has an extremely strong pungent smell of fermented shrimp.

The Singlong brand is produced from Singapore. The supreme quality belacan is produced in Penang, Malaysia under the Cheong Kim Chuan label.

A large selection of Thai, Vietnamese & other fish sauce products.

Next to the fish sauces are the soya sauce. One of my favorite ways to eat Indonesian sweet soya sauce (ketchup manis) is with shallots and eaten as an accompaniment to fried pomfret fish.

Dry rice noodles section.

Assorted housewares.

The front freezer has a favorite ingredient of my honey: tempe. As well, one can find frozen soursop drink which is one of my favorites.

Asian junk food.

The owners: Vin & his wife. Vin says they have been here for 10 years. When I asked if he gets back to Vietnam for business/personal, he says he doesn't get time to visit Asia as he is too busy stocking shelves and taking care of business. I'm sure one day they may take their life savings and retire to some scenic idyll somewhere in a pastoral province of Wonderful Vietnam.

Asia Market has been the constant mainstay of the condiment and 'exotic food' section of my refrigerator for many years now.

Long live Asia Market!