Chatuchak Weekend Market

6th Oct 2019

Thou shall not miss the Chatuchak weekend market while in Bangkok. Boasting more than 10 thousand stalls sectionalized to different areas, 30 minutes in and we were lost in a maze of shops. 

Direction: Train to Mo Chit station via light green Sukhumvit line. Follow the crowd or enter the market in any of its entrances.

These were landmarks taken from the train, if coming from the direction of Phaya Thai

Victory Monument

This building looked like London's Gherkin building
Pearl Bangkok

I didn't manage to get a good shot of the colorful Chatuchak market roofs from the train but here we are! One of the many entrances into Chatuchak. 

I wished I had a map. There were so many times we were walking in circles. Here trying to group the stalls we saw by section. 

Fashion and accessories section

The challenge is real when we got hungry and we still couldn't get out from this section. We needed to find the food section. Asking for direction brought us into more circles. Finally we just walked straight out to the opening and saw a stall. Too hungry to search for other alternatives so we settled here. Prices are also decent. Don't ask me which stall was this as I don't even know where were we. Just eating at the first random stall we saw. 

The beef noodles were good but the noodles were just too little.

Generous amount of longan. Thirst quenching on a sunny day.

After lunch, we walked into the Mixt shopping mall for some air conditioning. It was part of the indoor Chatuchak shopping. Along the way, we came across this clock tower. 

For my Cantonese speaking friends

Food court in these indoor malls were quite disappointing. Portion was really small. Taste is just meh.

Look at my glass noodle dish. The glass noodle can fit into my mouth in just 2 bites. 

I like this Retro-spective shop just outside of Mixt mall selling pre-loved items.

 I want to own one of these typewriters one day but it was just too heavy to bring home. These typewriters are still functioning. This brought back memories when my mom had one of this and I was playing with it, typing out stories when I was 10 or 12. My small fingers slipping into the cracks of the keys. Fixing the ribbon that stained my fingers black. Finally I had all of those setup with the paper rolled in and typed my first sentence when I realized the paper wasn't rolled straight enough causing the sentence to skew downwards or upwards. Using "-" to connect a single word when it was broken apart to two lines due to miscalculated white paper space. 

 I created character names and just letting my imagination flow. Then it was the electronic typewriters where it had a cool "backspace" feature to remove the error rather than the white correction pen back in the traditional typewriters where I had to blow dry it before I can type again on top of it. I think this blog is an evolution from all of these 😊

Jess needed to chill in the mall so I went back out to the outdoor market which is definitely more interesting. This time, I entered into a maze of pet shops. At the entrance was a stall selling all kinds of knife. I wonder if someone ran amok and grab one of these?

Pet section

Can someone tell me what is this cute creature? I don't know if its supposed to be a pet though. It looked like a highly intelligent marsupial. It tried to mimic my moves looking at me with its big curious eyes. It even tried to give me a high fi

OK it was actually trying to interact with me in this shot but this expression caught in camera is simply sad. Due to its high intelligence & small size, humans who owned it will surely lock them up in cages 😭

As I was admiring the colorful birds, I kept hearing someone greeting "Sawadeeka"

Watch this video to see who greeted me!

The aquarium section

The to go bag.

Felt bad for the fighting fish as they were kept visible with each other causing their fins to open all the time. Good for sales to show off the fishes but not good for the fish as they were constantly stressed in fighting mode. The prices for these fishes were also much cheaper than at home.

Pity the sting ray in such a small bag. Some big fishes cannot even swim upwards and had to stay horizontal to stay in the shallow water of the to go bag :(

The pet section in Chatuchak has even more animals than some zoos. Although I am not sure if some of them deserves to be pets.

The home furnishing section

This is one of the most aesthetic section. The prices of things here are quite high but the art and workmanship is something to appreciate.

Everything in here looked so alive except that they are not.

Taxidermy

These are so beautiful! 

One day, I'd like to come back here and get some for my home but there was a little problem. I can't decide which to get!

Can't believe we have spent half of the day here. It was really tiring. I thought we just covered a quarter of the market. I did get some T-shirts from here. 

Time to check out from this place and have a nice dinner at Siam Center/Paragon area.