Bangkok – Chatuchak Market

Markets are the pulse of a city — they quickly give you a feel for a place, how it ticks.  Pike Place Market in Seattle, for example, is fresh, clean, full of pristine seafood and produce, with a laid-back, affluent vibe.  In Paris, the market we found on Rue Poncelet speaks to the French persnickety passion for food.  There was a separate meat shop, fruit shop, vegetable shop, bakery, patisserie, and a fromagerie where the proprietor handled the cheeses so carefully and delicately, like they were jewelry.

So what did Chatuchak Market, Thailand’s largest market, say to us at first blush about Bangkok and Thailand?

Colorful, frenetic, disorderly, charming, jammed with people, vehicles, and objects from the beautiful to the ridiculous, slightly dirty, full of friendly people.  And it smells completely unique (grilled meats, fried bananas, shrimp paste and other goodies, with an undernote of pollution and grime).

Chatuchak spans a vast 35 acres, a sprawling labyrinth of shops selling everything from live squirrels to crockery to Hello Kitty underpants.  The individual shops are connected by dark, narrow walkways that facilitate following every White Rabbit further into the Chatuchak hole (“Was that a giant elephant carved out of a tree trunk down there?”).

The people watching is superb.  In one morning, we passed chatty local salesladies gossiping and teasing one another, kids playing and running around among the stalls, monks shuffling past in their sandals, farangs (foreigners, Westerners) like us wandering around wide-eyed, and sharp-eyed grandmas running their families’ rice and soup stalls like five-star generals.

And Chatuchak, like Bangkok, is full of food.  Every stray corner and cranny has a food stall jammed into it, with vendors selling diced tropical fruit, omelettes, sausages,  noodles, and more.  And it is all so ridiculously cheap.  Our first meal in Bangkok was at one of these food stalls in Chatuchak — a noodle stall filled with locals (always a good sign).  Our delicious bowl of noodle soup was only 40 baht — about $1.30.

If this is Thailand, we like what we see and can’t wait for more.