Chatuchak Market

Holy crap this place is frigging insane. I have never seen so many people in such a (relatively) small space, just a ceaseless throng of bodies in motion. I read online that there are over FIFTEEN THOUSAND different shops and stalls in this one place and having seen a small fraction of that total I would believe it. The way it seems to work is there's a major "highway" around the market which has endless stalls on both sides. This alone is enough to keep you occupied for hours, BUT between every couple stalls on either side is a little "side-road" that takes you where the majority of the stalls are, i.e. the real meat of the marketplace.




To give you a sense of how vast this part of Chatuchak is: if you started a game of hide and go seek and gave someone just a ten second head start you would NEVER find them again. I mean EVER. I made the mistake after buying something (more about that specific purchase later) of walking away and then thinking "Y'know, I should exchange this for another size." By pure dumb luck I was able to find it again...after a half hour of looking.




As for what they sell there, what I'd read online said they sold absolutely everything under the sun and considering the amount of stuff I undoubtedly missed I don't doubt this, however most of what I saw was just tourist crap. Granted some very nice tourist crap (really well made statues, baubles, silks, etc) but it sorta all blended together after awhile. Then while wandering about aimlessly in the terrifying grid that is the stall section of the marketplace I stumbled upon easily one of the coolest things I have ever seen:


http://www.koart.co.th/index_main.php


The website only has a couple pictures and they don't really give you a sense of the insane amount of detail in the work. Unfortunately the stall had a very strict "No Photo" policy so I couldn't take pictures of all the things I wanted to (which honestly was everything.) Anyway I ended up purchasing something small there (can't say what it is, it's a suuuurpriiiiise...) and while the cute clerk was ringing me up the owner walked out and asked me if I'd like to come inside and look at the bigger pieces. Bigger pieces such as a SEVEN FOOT TALL ALIEN WITH WORKING INNER JAW AND AN H.R. GIGER STYLE SPINNING CHAIR!!!! I must've looked like the biggest retard because I was just giggling incessantly with my mouth agape as I poked through all the other things he had in there, R2D2s and C3P0s and Darth Vaders and Gundams and Maijins and aliens and predators. All entirely crafted from nothing but recycled machine parts, screws and washers and who knows what else. Of course since these are actual works of art the prices on them weren't what you'd pay for trinkets (the little thing I got was about $17, that chair I mentioned earlier that he actually let me sit in was $9,000). I really wish I could pull myself together enough to scrape up some filming equipment and go shoot a little bio-piece on this guy and his work because it's really something I think more people need to see.




Anyway fanboy excitement aside, the other thing I literally wandered into was Chatuchak's fashion section. Now Bangkok in general is super fashion conscious (every big mall I've been in is almost entirely high-end boutique stores) and everybody dresses like rock stars but now I FINALLY know where the ones that aren't loaded get their gear. This place was a hipster's paradise. Hundreds upon hundreds of shirts you'd expect to see on Threadless for only $6 each. One stall in particular I was just startled to find even exists was called Filmsover. It was all filmmaking themed and intelligently so, not ridiculous engrish like you might expect. One design I particularly dug was the prototypical director's chair with the word "God" emblazoned on the back of it. I bought a couple shirts here (which yet again I can't divulge information about since they're gifts) and then stumbled upon another stall with two bad-ass (one of which in particular is just bizarre) designs I picked up as well for gifts. Honestly this section was REALLY hard to stay in for too long just because it was serious sensory overload, there were way too many awesome designs and granted they're $6 each but that really starts to add up. For fun I started doing the math while riding the subway home and figured out you could have a new shirt for every workday for $120/month. Anyway digressing back to this part of the fair, I really wish I could pull off looking cool (or at least conveying what my interests are externally) because this whole area was filled with people who just seemed super neat. Granted I'm sure a lot of them were the Bangkok equivalent of scenesters but some of them just seemed like people I'd like to hang out with, one dude in particular was just chilling out in his stall bopping his head to some cool tunes and just really sort of unaware and awesome. I'd really like to know if the people running the shops were also the shirt designers/makers because the two places I purchased from were both run by really cute, young girls and if so then I'm 100% in love.




So pretty awkward segue but one thing about the Chatuchak Market that I wasn't expecting was the begging. Like any major city you see a lot of it here and you grow pretty acclimated to it and get good at looking the other way, however here the people begging were all very heartbreakingly handicapped or disfigured. I saw one woman three times (which considering the size of the market is a strange happenstance) who had some sort of skin condition that made her look like a very bad burn victim with no ears or nose and her eyes were bloody red with no pupils. I actually saw a video of a baby with this condition (only click on that if you want to be really freaked out and made sad) and looking it up again now I find it's called Harlequin-type ichthyosis. Anyway besides her there was also a woman with no eyeballs (and eyes open enough where you could tell this was the case) pantomiming singing a song playing on a radio hanging around her neck and an infant who also looked like a burn victim but in a different way. Honestly I couldn't even describe that one because as soon as I saw him I looked away, seeing kids with those sort of conditions is just too hard to handle (which I know is a hell of a thing to say for a guy who doesn't have to deal with it in any way, shape or form). Anyway all I'm saying is like I'm finding with everything in Bangkok it made for a very strange juxtaposition of very fun and very sad. Like when you walk out of one of the seven-story malls (there's more than one) and right across the street is a series of incredibly run down buildings and wild dogs roaming around. It's a very heady mixture of extremes.




So yeah, that was seriously my entire day, what with the trip out and back and all the time spent there. Speaking of spent I blew WAY more money than I should have, my justification though is that this is my first week in Bangkok and I'm visiting these places for the first time, so I can be expected to indulge a little. Now that I've seen these things I'm really going to be frugal, I've bought enough stuff and now I just wanna bumble around and see what I can see for free.






Oh, and on a closing note...

COP ON SEGWAY!!!