Day 459: Chatuchak Weekend Market

In the morning, one of the girls in my dorm asked if I would be going to the big weekend market today.  I was a little surprised by the question because I hadn't realized that it was Saturday - a common traveler's disease. And since it was my first real day in Bangkok, I hadn't heard about any markets either.

A quick consultation with my travel guide later, I found out that the market in question was the Chatuchak Weekend Market, and that it was conveniently located at the other end of the sky train line running right next to my hostel. So I hopped onto the sky train and had a daylight look at Bangkok.

Bangkok really comes closest to what I imagine as the metropolis of the future. There are hyper-modern skyscrapers in steel and glass, there's the elevated sky train complete with elevated pedestrian walkways above huge intersections, and there are big elevated highways to alleviate the daily traffic jams. There are only two or three more levels of elevation missing, and you'd think the city had come straight out of a science fiction movie. The downside of this kind of city? The time it takes to get from A to B. Regardless of how well-organized public transport is in a city of Bangkok's size, it easily ends up taking an hour or more to get to your destination. Despite all the things I love about big cities, this may actually be the one reason prohibiting me from moving to one.

When I got to the market, the view from the sky train gave me a first impression of its size - it looked gigantic. According to my travel guide, there are more than 15.000 stalls. Apparently, each dot on this map represents one stall:

Needless to say, I didn't count them.

The market had just about everything on offer that you can think of. Clothing, accessories, jewelry, home decoration, kitchen equipment, food, and so on. I wandered through the aisles for a few hours, had some lovely food and fresh orange juice for next to no money, and then escaped the shopping masses again to the modern tranquility of the sky train. Have I mentioned at all that I'm not much of a 'shopping' kind of person?