Revisiting Chatuchak Market

We went to Chatuchak Market on our third day in Bangkok. We were lucky because it had only been re-opened less than a week after a few weeks of closure due to the floods in the area.Chatuchak Market had not really changed much from the last time I went there. OF course now that it is fully operational (again), people – both locals and tourists alike – come here in hordes to buy just about anything there is for grab.And believe me, there’s plenty of things up for grab here. It all depends on how much money you’ve got in your pocket and most importantly how much of it that you’re willing to spend. 😀Chatuchak Market is certainly known most for its size and the variety of goods that it offers. It is so huge you might need a map to stay on track or you’ll probably end up tailing behind your own tail. Believe me, it is very likely to happen.  😀It was only the beginning of our trip in Bangkok and Cambodia so it was only wise – or so we thought – not to spend too much of our precious money at Chatuchak Market. In fact, I didn’t really plan to buy anything but of course Chatuchak has been designed make a mockery out of people like me.If you plan NOT to buy anything then you better stay away from Chatuchak Market – or even the thought of visiting it. Believe me, you’ll never win. LOLz.Oh well, the advantage might be on you if you were born with a pair of boobies. This guy here wouldn’t give any discount to my friend KJH but was easily mellowed out by the faked mega-watt smile on Ulai’s face. I remember him saying to Mr. KJH  ‘I only give discount to her, but not you’.  Urghhh! But of course we knew how to deal with gatal people like him. We asked Ulai to do the buying and we paid the money to her later. Easy. LoLz.

If there was something that I had learned from my visit to Chatuchak Market, it would be to buy something on my first encounter (of it). I took interest in buying a pair of short pants – and I was very much on the verge of buying it until the thought of checking out other shops FIRST came to mind.I left the shop and continued browsing around but the look of the pants kept haunting me in my head. After checking out so many other shops and I still couldn’t find anything that interested me more than the pair of short pants, I said WTH and returned towards where I believe the shop had been.I must have underestimated the complexity of the maze of shops and isles and everything that make up Chatuchak Market. I couldn’t seem to find the shop anywhere around even after spending half an hour walking back and forth in the whole piece of confounding conundrum.  One thing about Chatuchak Market is that all the shops and the isles and the streets that divide the market into sections would look the same after awhile.In the end I had to give up looking because my legs were beginning to tremble and desperately in need of a break. We must have spent at least 8 hours wandering off around at Chatuchak Market and I don’t think we had even covered half of it yet. I might be happy to declare myself a marathoner but 8 hours was just too.. long. Still we left Chatuchak Market with a whole bundle of things in our bags and a thinner wallet in our pocket of course. Uhuks!

Goodbye wave to Chatuchak

So there wasn’t a better way of celebrating our buys than splurging a little bit more of our money over good dinner and I couldn’t think of any better place than –again – Petchaburi.Petchaburi is one probably of those places that well-justify Bangkok as the Food capital of the world. There are just so many food hawkers here you’ll tend to question who’s gonna eat all the food if they don’t get sold out at the end of the day.But then, the people of Bangkok are known for their BIG appetite for food and looking at how boisterous they are when it comes to food, I can’t quite imagine any day of the week when the hawkers run out of customers.Petchaburi looks more like a place where the locals come to feed their hungry stomachs at and not quite a place that goes friendly with tourists. We asked for the price of some delicious-looking grilled squid and almost at the same time the hawker and another guy – probably his assistant or something – came up with two different prices. That alone was already a turn-off so we left the street and all its hawkers to deal with their own people. Unless you look Thai and speak Thai, I don’t think you can ever get the right price.

But then, we actually didn’t go there for those ‘highly-mobile’ food stalls. Instead, we went there for the food stalls on the roadside of Thanon Phentchaburi. Looking more appropriate with tables and chairs to accommodate its customers, it was certainly the right place to go.

One special thing about the food here is how they grill everything with charcoal. Even the steamboat uses a pot of charcoal to keep the heat going and believe me it really gives some kind of different smell and tastiness to everything on it.

And I could never forget the tastiness of grilled pork intestines that I ate exactly at the same hawker three years ago so I wouldn’t want to miss eating it again this time. Then what would be an authentic Thai food without its famous Thai Salad – the sliced mangos with marinated Seafood and all – something that I found weird when I first saw it but instantly took a liking of after taking my first bite.Things had been going so well for us so far and our days in Bangkok deserved to be celebrated a bit so here we go with a Yam Seng! 😀

With such a great feast and together with 2 (big) bottles of beer to come with it,  we were expecting a big hole in our wallets but no. THB495 for everything or less than RM50 to be divided among us three – that was actually heavenly cheap.  It would be our last evening in Bangkok and there was something that we wanted to do before we called it a day.You know how getting a massage in Malaysia is such an expensive deal so we wouldn’t want to miss going for a massage now that we are here in Bangkok where massages are known to be cheap and highly affordable. I remember walking past (and ignoring) a massage parlor every time I walked over to Ratchadewi BTS Station from the hotel that I stayed in three years ago so when I found out that it was still there, I knew I’d go for it this time.

The plan was to have a full body massage – probably Thai massage which is known for its bone-breaking and butt-tearing aggressiveness and all – but with all the eating and beer-drinking that we just did earlier on, we decided it wasn’t a good idea after all. After all the walking that we did back at Chatuchak Market, a foot massage was all that we needed most.

Following the recommendation by the shop owner, we took a bus back to the hostel – just for the fun of it. Again we encountered some problem talking to the bus conductor but somebody in the bus surprised us when he intervened first in English and later in Malay! He was so nice to tell the bus conductor where to drop us off. You see, traveling has really taught us that good people are indeed everywhere. So, back in the hostel room later, we sat looking at the new bags of stuffs that we had scooped up at the Chatuchak Market.  They seemed to be more of them than we had expected.

Now we had to think of a way to bring them out of Thailand and later drag them across Cambodia. Damn.