So, clearly this post is long, long overdue. I was thinking for a while that I wouldn’t launch into an account of my travels between my time in Phuket and where I am now (living and teaching a smallish city called Sakon Nakhon near the Lao border) and would instead tell you about small town life, but that’s not coming together as quickly as planned. Really, you can take this as an indication of how things work in terms of timing in Thailand: everything is always late, and you’ll end up sitting around, not even sure what you’re waiting for, and when it arrives it’s usually not what you expected. So all this delay is actually part of my larger, over-arching strategy to make you feel what Thailand is like on a daily basis. (Did anyone fall for that? No? Ok, moving on.)
Night markets! Markets are one of my favorite things about Thailand. In larger cities they’re massive, and the food and goods there are extraordinary. It’s basically just a big feast for the senses.
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| Phuket Night Market |
Choose one of the lanes of vendors and you’ll walk through a cloud of perfume where people are hawking factory-second brand name cosmetics, duck under wildly patterned tie-dye beach dresses deliberately hung in your way, be assaulted by the pounding base of an illegally downloaded CD, and happily down the sample of sweet Thai wine thrust into your hand (and then probably buy three bottles which you have to lug around from stall to stall for the rest of the night without breaking- avoid this).
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| Chiang Mai Night Market |
The first thing you want to do is hit the food section. No one shops well on an empty stomach.
Spend a little time just walking around. Check out the freshest fruits and vegetables, some of which I've never seen before.
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| What are those giant bean things? Awesome, that's what. |
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| Supa fresh. |
By then you'll have picked up at least one edible. When I first went to the night market in Phuket my friend Roisin and I spent the majority of our time in the food area. We circled it at least four times.
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| Eat everything. |
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| How good does that look? |
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| Ok, maybe don't eat everything. This looks questionable. |
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| If it looks spicy, it is SPICIER THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE. |
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| Seaweed balls are the bomb. |
OK, I didn't try absolutely everything.
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| Uh- what? |
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| No. Just no. |
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| Hell no. |
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| Especially when there's a massive wok of pad thai to be had, free of insects (mostly, probably). |
Your last buy in the food section should be something on a stick. It’s helpful when pointing to which tie-die dress you want or gesturing emphatically with while haggling.
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| Decisions, decisions. |
Then go check out what they have for sale. I was unable to take a lot of photos of the non-edibles, because for some reason people in Thailand hate when you take photos of the things they’re selling, even in big stores. They’ll post signs that forbid it and announce it over loudspeakers. I have no idea why. But I managed to get a few photos of random things:
You’ll find these everywhere. They’re actually soap, painstakingly carved to look like flowers.
Any town of considerable size has motorbike taxis. It's an easy, cheap, and sometimes terrifying way to get around. Don't ask your driver to drag race with the taxi next to him at 3 am in Chiang Mai- he'll do it, and once they hit 65 mph the thing starts to shudder and rattle under you like it's about to come apart. Just so you know. In any case, these are models of those little taxis made out of aluminum cans.
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| The sharp edges make these especially good toys for children. |
And of course, the best impulse buy of all, a puppy!
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| A husky in Thailand? Seriously? |
I have no ending for this post, so we’ll end with a puppy, however misplaced. A puppy is always a good note to end on.
