Chatuchak Market - Only 10,000 Shopping Stalls

The Chatuchak Market in Bangkok is probably the biggest outdoor market in the world. In fact it is so big, that there is no way that an exact count of the number of outlets exists. Merchants move in one week and out the next, a food wagon shows up out of the blue and is gone by mid day. I have seen estimates from 8,000 to 12,000 stalls. It really doesn’t matter, you just need to know that it covers 35 acres and is filled with everything imaginable.

The 27 different sections within the market sell:

  • Clothing & Accessories 

• Handicrafts

• Ceramics 

• Furniture and Home Decorations

• Food and Beverages

• Plants and Gardening tools

• Art and Gallery

• Pets and Pet Accessories

• Books

• Antiques and Collectibles

• Miscellaneous and Used Clothing

We spent only a couple of hours there today and barely covered a tiny fraction of the market. The constant aroma of cooking meats, stews, fish and other unidentifiable smells were constantly interrupting your progress. Coconut ice cream, Thai popsicles, chocolate/nut covered bananas, gigantic fried prawns and dozens of coffee and Thai tea outlets made sure that you would never starve.

The market actually holds little interest for me. Firstly, the immense size is overwhelming and practically discourages me from the moment I enter the grounds. Too large, too spread out, too frantic, too aromatic, too hot, too hot and even too hot. A couple of hours trying to just orient ourselves and the wimpy men retreated via the Bangkok Skytrain to our apartment at the end of the line, a half hour away. The dauntless women, who were not as easily discouraged as the men, continued the fight for another couple of hours. They swear to return to explore the other 10,987 shops that they did not enter today, at a later date.

In some ways it is comparable to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul but on an even larger scale. The Grand Bazaar was home to ONLY 4400 shops so will have to take at least second place in the grand scheme of mega shopping markets. Actually, my favourite market is the Crossroads Farmer’s Market in Calgary with about 100 shops, something that I can manage. Not to mention that a lunch of kielbasa and pirogies is readily available. 

A Mall Is Not A Mall, Is Not A Mall!

Everyone knows that men, and especially one named Ken, just love to go to the mall. I am a veritable mall maniac. I go at least once a year whether I need to or not. Well, let me tell you I have forsaken the expression, “ A mall is a mall is a mall,” after two weeks in Bangkok. 

We have entered the domain of the Mega Mall or the Colossal Shopping Centre or the Mother of all Malldom. A quick search has revealed that Bangkok is the home of over 21 major malls, with more than half of them built in the past decade. They are new, they are massive and they are spectacular from an architectural point of view. 

All of Bangkok’s bigger malls have a minimum of 250 shops. Most of them contain 500 to 1000 outlets and the grand daddy malls have 2500 shops. We went to Platinum Mall yesterday and encountered a modern building of six floors with an advertised 2500 stores. Most of the shops are rather small, about 12 by 25 feet, with about 300 to 400 on a FLOOR! It is imperative to drop bread crumbs as you try to meander through the maze of aisles and paths or there is no returning to your entrance door. One book described this particular mall as an indoor flea market with air conditioning and marble floors. And that pretty much sums it up. 

The other kind of mall, that I find really inviting, is the upscale mall with nothing but Gucci, Hermes, and Dolce and Gabbana stores for those who prefer to spend $2500 on a purse. Imagine 400 Holt Renfew outlets in one area. The prestige malls feature wide sculpted aisles, clerks in suits or resembling fashion models, a few articles on display and a destaining eye that told me they knew I was an interloper and had entered their hallowed sanctum in error. 

By comparison, Calgary has about 10 major malls with CrossIron Mills one of the biggest with between 200 to 300 tenants. So if you stack 6 or 7 Market Malls one on top of another you start to approach a Bangkok Mall. 

One mall advertises over 100 restaurant outlets to chose from. That may be true, but I think over 800 of the Thai rice or noodle or broth dishes all look very similar. We often just point at the picture in the menu when we order and hope for the best. Invariably, the food is tasty but sometimes when it arrives we try to reconcile the food with the menu picture, then just shake our heads, and eat it. No big deal, just different.

As much as it is a shopping venue, a mall is also a free escape from the hot humid weather on the outside into an air conditioned, smog free environ. That alone is reason to go malling!

I will save the outdoor Chatachak Weekend Market with its 10,000 shops for another time. Needless to say I am in mall heaven and Darlene is putting up with my shopping addiction!

Television, Tissues And Tasty Treats!

Reading the Bangkok Post online this morning disclosed that the news presented was local or regional as I would have expected. There were two articles, however, that stood out as outliers. One described LeBron James lifetime endorsement contract with Nike for gazillions of dollars and Trump’s ranting about registering Muslims in the US.  Of course, I thought that a few other more important world events such as the Paris climate conference or the Syrian conflict might be covered, but no, only LeBron and the Donald. Perhaps the Bangkok Post is owned by the same intellectual giants who enlighten us with FOX News! 

First time ever. We went into an upscale mall today for a brief visit. There was a doorman or concierge that saluted us as we entered the building. Either he recognized the Queen of Shopping, who was accompanying me, or it is a Thai custom. I will chose to believe the former. 

Trying to keep informed of worldly events is only possible with the Internet. We have a lovely 42 inch flat screen TV in our apartment with six scintillating channels. Channels one or two are identical news channels in Thai, channel 3 is yellow interference, channels 4 and 5 are identical children’s programming and channel 6 is black and white static. Take your pick! This hardship is actually a blessing in disguise, as it forces one to read more, walk more and even make conversation. Probably a bonus, rather than a negative. Another of the small adaptations that are required when you live overseas! The only saving grace is that we know that those of you in Canada who possess over 2,345 channels don’t have anything more interesting to watch than we do!

Generally, the Thai people are quite small in stature, with fine features. Even if you never saw a Thai person, you would know they were small whenever you went into a restaurant. When you pulled a serviette from the tissue dispenser to wipe your fingers you would be holding a 4 inch by 8 inch piece of micro thin tissue that is barely big enough to whisk off the grease of one chicken wing. By the time I finish a finger food meal I have extracted enough “paper?” tissue to wallpaper the kitchen! A Thai will use one tissue and find it sufficient. Just saying!

The Bangkok Skytrain: Every time I ride the elevated train I marvel that:

• Adults will get up and offer their seat to children. My granddaughter thinks she is royalty. Eight year old Helen will stand with the soulful expression in her eyes of an urchin returning home from the sweatshop and before you know it someone leaps up and offers her a seat. 

• You are constantly serenaded by cell phone music as everyone has a cell phone and everyones phone rings at least once on every journey. A veritable concert of eclectic music.

• That every station’s name seems to sound the same to me e.g. Flang long, Flow dong, Plith wing, Wong pot, Chit mit or some other combination of cacophonous sounds. Instead of listening for the name of the station I just learn the number. Our stop is Udom Suk or number 12.

Question of the Day: Saw a poster advertising Nancy’s Message Parlour and Bakery today. Can someone explain the correlation between a message parlour and a bakery? Possible answers: The both deal with buns! They both involve kneading! They both provide basic goods, but for a few dollars more, they can offer some exotic extras!

Scream! Please Not Another School Christmas Concert!

Today, we were invited to watch the grandkids perform at the Berkley International School Elementary/Middle School Christmas Concert. If our two star performers would not have been auditioning on stage for future musical stardom, I would not have gone. But, of course, this was a special occasion.

With a balmy 92 degree Fahrenheit temperature making it impossible to weasel my way out because it was too cold and wintery, we went to the concert. It was staged in the outdoor basketball court mainly because it had a covered roof and was surrounded by ten huge fans to try to keep the audience cool. 

We picked up our program and awaited the magic. The program was a composite of the old and the unfamiliar. I recognized tunes (slightly) like Don’t Stop Believing, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and Donna Nobis Pacem. I was more entertained by some new additions like Jingle Bell Parade, Turn Off That Nose (a recent anthem of mine), Snowman, Where’d You Go and Ugly Sweater(?)

More interesting than the program were the names of some of the kids at the school. I don’t intend to be disparaging, but I found some wonderfully unique children’s names. Among them were such jewels as: Photon, Cheesecake, Sun, Cheetah, Pun Pun, Kaw Kaw, Wolfy, Pear,

Putter, Mook, Cotton, and Ice. I am sure to many of the Thai parents, the names Helen and Sawyer, drew more attention than Obo!

This concert from a population of less than 300 kids involved several string selections and a half dozen choral renditions. With my never ending ex-principal’s propensity for evaluation, I was disappointed that there was very little to criticize! The program moved swiftly, the entrances and exits were swift and without commotion, the attention and input of the students was commendable and it went off without a hitch. The singing was very good as well. 

I have to give accolades to the music teachers and everyone involved. My grandkids concerts in a special Fine Arts School in Calgary were a distant 55th in the grand scheme of things, by comparison. A quality recital in a foreign country that surpasses the offerings of a Fine Arts School at home raises some important questions in my deteriorating mind!

A final observation was the orderly dismissal and the contributions of senior students in helping with disassembling the seating area and stage, without any hassle. Student cooperation was excellent and a sign that lots of good things are happening in our grandkids school in Thailand. That is very comforting for an old grandpa’s heart. A day that began with a little reluctance, ended with smiles all around. Thailand is not called the “Land of Smiles” for nothing!

7-11 And Mun-nee, Mun-nee, Mun-nee !

A few more fascinating (boring) observations during week one in Bangkok:

In many apartment buildings the elevator only stops on even numbered floors, with the exception of the main floor. When you emerge on to floor ten for example, you then have to walk up or down one flight of stairs if your final destination is floor eleven or nine. Not sure if it is a health and fitness initiative or an attempt to save on elevator wear and tear. Glad we live on floor 24!

There is a 24 hour Value Market on the ground floor of our building. It is a competitor to 7-11 (more on those later) and sells everything including a never ending supply of takeaway Thai meals. When anyone enters the store there is a little bell that rings “ding dong, ding dong”. When I witness the volume of traffic in and out of the store all I can think of when I hear the bell ring is “mun-nee, mun-nee, mun-nee”! A license to print money!

Small motor bikes flourish in Bangkok. They are inexpensive to run, are very quiet and double as a taxi for one. I have already decided I will not be hanging on the the back of a kamikaze driver to save a dollar. Since they are so mobile and agile they often utilize the sidewalks in order to avoid the congestion of the roadways. At night a single headlight bearing down on you as you walk home is a common sight!

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When you first visit Thailand there are two very significant sights that you can see on almost every street. The first is a temple or wat or a Buddhist shrine. They are literally everywhere. They are all usually brightly decorated in gold, flowers, candles, or incense, with statues of Buddha. You know that you are definitely not in Kansas anymore the minute you arrive at the airport. 

The second dominant edifice that you will see in Thailand is a more modern addition also on every street corner decorated in green, white, red and orange stripes and displaying a sign of some kind with a big red numeral “seven” and a sash in the middle with the word “eleven”. The 7-11 store is more common in Thailand than any other business or outlet including McDonalds or Starbucks.

There are 8,334, 7-Eleven stores in Thailand as of 2013, with over 4,150, 7-Eleven stores in Bangkok alone. I am only guessing, but I would venture to say that they outnumber the shrines and temples by a wide margin. The first store opened in 1989 on Patpong Road in Bangkok and now Thailand has the 3rd largest number of 7-Eleven stores after Japan and the United States. According to plans, there will be 10,000 7-Eleven stores by 2018,

Not only can you buy the usual assortment of drinks including Slurpees and Big Gulps, candy, junk food, fast food and ready made meals, but you can also do your banking, pay your bills and if you buy and pay for some airline tickets, they can be picked up to your nearest outlet. 7-11s have become a national institute in Thailand and there does not appear to be any end in sight to their meteoric growth. Dump your Burger King shares and buy 7-11!

Chooey Dooey and the Bandit

I never fail to be amazed at how advanced supposedly Third World or “backward” countries are compared to us in so many ways. 

In 2000, when we went to Istanbul, I was introduced to the Akbil, a small device containing a computer chip that you could “load” with money to pay to ride the public transit bus, train, metro, ferry boat or subway. A wonderful simple technology that Calgary has still been unable to implement even after spending over $5 million dollars in search of this miracle product. (that has been used in the Middle East for over 15 years already). It still boggles my mind.

Today, I found another small invention that we don’t have. When I went out to get a couple of cups of takeout coffee, they put the two hot cardboard cups into a plastic bag. My first reaction was that it was going to be a challenge to balance the cups and prevent them from tipping over and spilling. Silly me! The Thais have designed a plastic bag just to handle that situation. The bag has two sleeves within the bag so the cups are held upright when the bag is lifted by the handles. Not a drop was ever in danger of being spilled. Someone tell Starbucks you have a deal for them!

Learning a new language is not so much fun! Nothing we do is much more difficult than trying to communicate to a foreigner when you don’t know the language. However, it can provide a lot of laughs. For example some of the Thai words and their English pronunciation can be entertaining. Fish is pronounced blah, chicken is gay, crab is boo and pork is moo. Banana is glooey, beer is bee-a, (that’s handy), chilli is prick, rice is kow, Help! is chooey dooey.  You often have so much fun just chuckling at the pronunciation that you actually forget to learn something that is really useful like, “Where is the toilet?”

Believe it or not I even observed a new phenomenon at Ikea today. For seven baht (about 25 cents) my grandson could buy an ice cream cone. He paid his money and they gave him a cone (no ice cream) and a token. He took his cone and token to the ice cream vending machine, placed his cone into a slot in the machine, inserted his token into the coin slot and voila, the machine filled his cone with twisty soft ice cream and away he went. Pretty high tech ice cream scoop to me!

In a lot of foreign countries taxi drivers can get a bad wrap. They are often accused of taking the long way home or overcharging the naive tourist. They sometimes fall into the same category as gypsies, tramps and thieves. I did a double take in our cab ride home from Ikea when I read that the name of our taxi driver was Mr. Bandit. He didn’t even have to pretend he was honourable, I was suspicious on the entire drive home. PS Upon arrival I even tipped him for being fair and honest!

Question of the Day: What are the chances that in a city of over ten million people that you would run into someone you used to know over ten years ago in Istanbul at an Ikea store in Bangkok where she was buying a Christmas tree while you were contemplating Ikea Swedish meatballs for lunch? I would suspect that the odds were pretty long!

We live in a tough apartment complex. They have strict rules and standards. If you should happen to sit in our lobby in one of the cosy chairs and fall asleep, you will be fined the equivalent of $20. If you are caught smoking in the building you will be charged $80 and your water supply to your unit will be cut off for a week. The management definitely is a “no holds barred” and a “take no prisoners” kind of landlord. Will be taking some of these standards back to our condo board of directors for consideration when I return!

YYC to YVR to TPA to BKK

The Whooping Crane has arrived. Perhaps not as glamorous as, “The Eagle has landed”, but a more accurate portrayal of reality. After two months of a hacking and coughing imitation of the Crane, we landed successfully and without incident in Bangkok half an hour ahead of schedule. We were disappointed that the promised 96 degree arrival temperature was only 94 degrees, but we have promised not to sweat the small things.

I need to begin our journal with praise and accolades to EVA airlines, which prior to our trip I, like most Calgarians, had never heard of. It is the national airlines of Taipei and flies mostly in SE Asia only touching down in the North American ports of Vancouver and LA. It was a joy! For an additional $600 round trip fee, we were upgraded to a business class environment with additional leg, arm, elbow and ass room that was almost considered privileged. 

Although I dreaded the 12+ hour flight from YVR to TPA (airlines lingo you know) it was fantastic. Not only did we have additional elbow room, the seats were engineered by God. When you pushed the lever to push your seat back, the back of the seat actually went down and the seat cushion slid forward causing you to assume an almost semi horizontal position with my legs stretched almost straight out. When reclined, I could not even touch that back seat of the chair directly in front of me. Truly, a miracle! 

As we departed, I consumed a half a sleeping pill, removed my shoes, reclined my seat and for the first time in my travel journeys, actually slept for about seven hours. I am sure this thrilling rendition of my sleeping pleasures totally mesmerizes my two readers, but the truth needs to be told. Air Canada Rouge does not have a monopoly on comfortable, quality air travel.

EVA’s accolades also extend to their food service offerings. Our breakfast menu comprised: croissant and jam, grapefruit and apple slices, strawberry yoghurt, sweet pickle, sliced salami, and white cheese, mushroom omelette, with roasted potatoes, tomato and spinach, dinner roll, coffee and water. The fried fish fillet dinner entree was also delicious. And not once were we offered the choice of the delightful dry pretzel mixture or the two desiccated cookies we have grown to expect on Air Canada. Did I mentioned all beverages including wine and cocktails were complimentary?

There is only one aspect of the EVA service that might draw criticism from some. I was rudely awakened in mid-snore when a stewardess “accidentally” spilled a small glass of water on my crotch while I was sleeping. My first reaction was to slap on my life jacket and try to recall the safety demonstration on its use, that I usually ignore, and head for a life raft. Before I could launch myself and my dripping loins toward the exit she brought a handful of towels and offered to soak up the damages. Darlene quickly responded that a mop up would be unnecessary and I would air dry over the remaining five hours of the flight. Party pooper!

After a series of small adventures and misadventures (too trivial to recount) we arrived at our rented apartment, surprised the grandkids at their school and had our first Bangkok supper surrounded by the madness of a local street food stall and hole in the wall restaurant street. An early bedtime on a precast concrete mattress completed our first day of 92.