Night Bazaar

The priority for our first full day in Chiang Mai was to find a place to stay. We left the Peppermint House, moved to the Prince Hotel for one night, then visited the Santitham Guest House. The Santitham was the place we were hoping for, and we were excited to get moved in as quickly as possible.

Our afternoon task was to locate the Thai Massage school. It was smack dab in the middle of the old city on Rachamanka Road, which is one of the primary streets in that area. Still having a little trouble with the language, we started giving things our own names and using mnemonics to help us remember important words and phrases. Rachamanka Road we fondly renamed Rachmaninoff. Hello in Thai is 'Sawadee Khrap', or our much easier Americanized version 'sweaty cup'. Useful to know here in this laid back culture is the phrase for 'never mind', 'Mai Pan Wri', or our simpler version, 'my pen writes'. We have finally learned Thai for 'Thank You' well enough to be understood but still foreign sounding enough to get a few laughs, although we fail to see what's so funny about our version, 'cop's coon crap'.

The evening turned out to be rather bizarre, a night bazaar in fact. Every Sunday night a portion of the old city streets are closed to vehicles and come alive with hundreds of food and merchandise vendors. The market is popular with both the tourists and the locals because of the good quality products and food sold at very low prices. The 'walking market' as it is also called, is promoted by the city as a way for locals to sell their handcrafted products, and as a way to showcase the area's culture, food and entertainment. We found the prices to be lower and the selection of goods larger than most of the other shopping areas we've seen, and the food was amazing, although much of it unrecognizable. Our recurring dialogue went something along the lines of "What in the World is that? We'll take two."

The walking market is hard to describe, and something that must be experienced. Huge masses of people visit the market, and they are often shoulder to shoulder - or stomach to back - and all trying to maneuver around each other. The best thing to relate it to is a weekend at Times Square, Burbon Street on Fat Tuesday, or when the doors open at WalMart on Black Friday. It is interesting to note that in spite of the mobs of people, everyone flows through the streets in an orderly and polite fashion. The people seem to follow similar patters when they drive. Watching the traffic here for the first time is almost terrifying, but after some experience we found that drivers are quite orderly and much more aware of what's going on around them than Americans driving at home while on their cell phones.

Most of the entertainment at the Walking Market is provided by underprivileged groups such as blind singers, crippled or elderly musicians, and also performances by local school kids and small children performing in traditional Thai costumes. We observed a demonstration by Thai monks, although we never did figure out what they were doing.

Our favorite part has to be the food. We had a plate of ten pieces of assorted sushi for about $3, real fruit smoothies for less than a $1 each, and bowls of noodles with 'mystery stuff' in them for less than 50¢. Not to mention lots of other things that we shouldn't mention because we wouldn't know how to mention them, such as the green squishy things with the white goopy stuff on top. The one thing we do know is that the prices are very low and the selection is enormous. We are already looking forward to returning next weekend.