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Published: December 6th 2009
Gold Shop, Warorat Market
These gold shops are everywhere in Thailand.It’s hard not to feel nostalgic about leaving Chiang Mai. We’ve been here for five weeks; we leave tomorrow.
We’ve been staying in an apartment. After staying in budget guesthouses, being able to spread out in an apartment has been a godsend. For some reason, one of my happiest memories of our trip so far is putting things in drawers our first day in the apartment - just realizing that we could organize our stuff so we knew where everything was, and that we would be here for a while. It was such a good feeling, and this is such a good place. It’s so good that Jordan cried when we first got to our apartment. It was simply too much.
Our first night in Chiang Mai too was magical. It was Loy Krathong, which we wrote a blog about. At bedtime, after going out into the chaos of the festival, we lay on our bed and looked out the wall of our bedroom, which is all glass with a huge sliding glass door. The Loy Krathong fire balloons drifted across the sky everywhere. It was, literally, magical.
We’ve liked lots of things about Chiang Mai. Mostly our apartment. Also being able to eat in, to cook what we wanted to cook from a grocery store that’s nicer than most in the US. That stuff has been great for us, but not very interesting if you’re sitting at home.
We’ve also liked the food here. Thai food is delicious. I think the food on the streets, and at little rickety-looking restaurants, is much better than the food at Thai restaurants at home. We’ve particularly enjoyed Thai chicken-rice (amazingly succulent boneless / skinless chicken breast and rice with delicious soy-ginger-chili sauce and a bowl of broth), Thai curries (similar to red curry and green curry in Thai restaurants in the US, but better) and Phad Thai (fried noodles - like phad thai at home but better). We’ve eaten lots of other things too, but these have been our favorites.
We’ve also enjoyed Loy Krathong, and all of the Buddhist wats, which we’ve written about.
Chiang Mai’s markets. Another thing that makes Chiang Mai particularly fun is its markets. There are basically two kinds: permanent markets and what Chiang Mai folks call “walking streets.”
Warorot Market. Warorot Market is a large permanent market near our apartment, the one we use on an every-other-day basis.
As in most Asian cities, Chiang Mai has set aside several huge spaces as a market. There are several in Chiang Mai; Warorot is the largest one that is near the city center.
Warorot Market is sort of a cross between the biggest tailgate market you could ever imagine and an open-air Wal-Mart sort of experience, but the size of 5 or so Super Wal-Marts.
First, there are endless food products. Much of the stuff for sale is stuff that I can’t recognize, and certainly would never eat. But much of it too is the same stuff you would see at a tailgate market in the US: fresh fruits and vegetables, mostly.
Veggies. There is every vegetable that we would have at a US farmers’ market, plus many that we would not have (particularly various kinds of eggplants that we don’t have).
Fruits. There are also all of the fruits that we have at home, with the exception of maybe peaches and berries. Strawberries are in now, so there are a lot of them. And we
have seen peach trees on bus rides, so I know they have them at some point during the year. And the apples seem to be from the US, New Zealand, or China. But most of the other fruits (watermelons, oranges, bananas, pineapples) seem to be grown locally.
In addition to the fruits we have, there are many, many kinds of tropical fruits that you would never see in the US. The most famous are probably durian (a big spiky fruit that smells very strong and very odd), pomelo (like a big grapefruit, but much better than grapefruits), jackfruit (another big spiky one, with yellow fruit inside), and mangosteen (purple apple-sized fruit that you cut open to get at a sweet grape-like fruit). There are many, many others. We’ve tasted a lot of them, but we mostly eat pomelo, pineapple, and oranges.
Today we walked through the market, to get a few things. There were piles and piles of luscious, colorful, succulent fruits. Then right in the middle of all the stalls and piles of technicolor fruits, a stall selling bugs. Barbecued bugs.
Meat and other surprises. There is also every kind of meat you could imagine and
recognize, and many kinds of meat that you can’t imagine and recognize. You see the food processing happening right in the market, right before your eyes. No packaged, plastic-wrapped meats.
There are also stalls and stalls of dried seafood of every kind imaginable, and many things you’ve never seen. Lots of dried fish, but also lots and lots of dried squiddy-looking things, and cuttlefish, and all sorts of odd, high-smelling, astringent-looking sea-things.
There are, of course, piles and piles of chilis and chili paste. Thai food is spicy; it takes a lot of chilis to cook here.
There are also sections of prepared foods, various Thai foods. Northern Thai are big on sausages, so they’re everywhere (and actually very tasty). Some of the food is unrecognizable to me, and looks pretty intense, but is probably actually tasty (because everything here seems to be tasty).
Then there are piles and piles of food things I just don’t recognize or know what they are. One of the pictures is a stall selling pork products of various kinds - find the little piggy. I guess they are pork rind kinds of things. Well, that’s something familiar….
Everywhere, clothes. Frenzied Shopping
Sunday Walking Street The food goes on and on, for blocks. Other blocks are filled with small stalls selling extremely affordable clothes. At times these stalls get very busy, just packed with people (mostly women) looking for bargains.
Many of the stalls are along sidewalks. Clothes are piled in, and there’s a narrow space to walk through, and that narrow space is often full of shoppers. There is everything. Most of it is Chinese, not the same stuff at Wal-Mart, but Asian versions of the similar stuff.
There are also indoor markets, blocks long, full of larger stalls selling clothes. They go on and on and on.
Other goodies. There are sections of other things too. There is a flower section. It’s along a busy street, and people pull in to buy flowers pre-arranged like the flowers that they use to make offerings at temples.
There are stalls selling random things. Some handicrafts. Some stalls selling care packages for monks. Stalls and stalls of kitchen ware and plastic containers. Lots of other things I can’t now remember.
Walking Streets. So, the main market, described above, is one kind of Thai market. It’s open every day, pretty much all
Blind Band
Superb band of blind musicians at Sunday Walking Street. Excellent. day (and night). It’s there when you need it.
Chiang Mai also has what they call Saturday and Sunday Walking Streets. These are more like street fairs or crafts fairs in the US. They’re meant to be fun, rather than utilitarian. And they are really fun.
On Saturday night they block off one major street so there are no cars, and on Sunday night they block off another major street.
Both streets are blocked off for a long ways, maybe a mile. Both sides of the streets, and the middle, are lined with crafts stalls and food stalls.
The selection is pretty mind-boggling. There are lots of tourists who come, so there is stuff for tourists - T-shirts, clothes and crafts from Northern Thai hill tribes (the equivalent of Native Americans in the US).
But Thai shoppers far outnumber Western shoppers, and most of the stuff is for everybody.
The crafts are really nice. You can tell that Chiang Mai has a strong arts and crafts community. There are lots of young Thai people who look and act pretty much like young craftspeople in the US. Their stuff is creative, and edgy, and cool
Pork Goods Stall
Warorat Market - see the little piggy? in an Asheville sort of way.
Everyone is out, strolling, looking, snacking, having a good time.
Princess puppy stalls. Some of our favorite stalls are the ones selling clothes for the princess dogs that Thai people love so much, mostly Shih-Tzus and Pomeranians. There are probably more well-groomed and pampered Shih-Tzus per capita in Chiang Mai than in any town in the world. In each Walking Street, there are 4-5 stalls selling fancy sweaters and Chinese-looking outfits for your Shih-Tzu. And the stalls are crowded with cute Thai people buying cute clothes for their cute and spoiled dogs.
The food is good too. There is street food everywhere. Much of it is stuff we can’t recognize, but sometimes we just try stuff. It’s always good.
Street musicians. There are street musicians every 10 steps. Sometimes it’s teenagers just playing a guitar, singing Thai pop songs. They’re very brave. The best ones are these bands of four blind guys. They sit in a line, behind each other. They have makeshift instruments, but they are superb musicians and extremely tight bands. They really are stunningly good. One of the pictures shows one of the best bands.
Massages. Singer Songwriter
Sunday Walking Street Thai people really like massages, and massages are on offer everywhere in Chiang Mai. At the Walking Streets, there are makeshift massage stalls all along the street. People bring out very comfortable chairs, like recliners almost, and comfortable pads or mattresses. And you get a massage for $2 an hour, right there at the night market. It’s mostly Thai people who get them, but tourists do sometimes as well. Massages aren’t a luxury in Thailand; they’re just part of daily life.
Chiang Mai: Familiar yet so different. Today we were walking in the streets near the main market (Warorot Market), after buying a few things. We’ve been in Chiang Mai for five weeks, so it all seems familiar, almost homey.
May said, “You know, I love this place, and it feels just like home, but when I look around me on this street, nothing is like it is at home. Everything is different: The way people look and talk, the way they shop, the way the stores display things, what the stores sell, the signs on the stores and the writing on the signs, the way people drive, the way the buildings look and the way the streets
Crowds
Sunday Walking Street: This captures well how busy it is. are arranged…. Anyone from home walking down this street would be like, ‘Whoa, look at this, look at that.’ I love that it’s so different, so incredibly different, yet so familiar and homey to us too.”
I think that sums up our experience in Chiang Mai. We stayed long enough for it to become familiar to us, and for us to become familiar to it. But then when you look up from where you’re walking, and pay attention, there it is in all of its endlessly fascinating, intriguing, compelling, beguiling difference. Familiarity, yet novelty and difference: It has been a great combination.
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Louisa Goebel
non-member comment
crowds
I remember the crowds bothered some of you at first, but it sounds like you are at home in the busy Walking Street now. You have had a lot of chicken and rice on this trip! Glad everyone likes it! Hope your next stop, Hong Kong(?) is as pleasant! We will be thinking of Ella on her birthday! Love, Louisa and Paul