Hi. Chiang Mai is a big city in northern Thailand with lots of temples, and lots of people, and lots of restaurants, and lots of cars, and even more scooters, and quite a few markets, too, it turns out. We’d been to Chiang Mai before but it was a really long time ago so we were pretty pumped to see if we’d still like it. And while we were figuring that out, we thought, hey, why not check out some Chiang Mai markets? Because they are a big thing in Thailand, mostly for selling stuff, but also for eating and drinking and walking and even sometimes praying, as it turns out.
Some of the markets are more for local folks, the kind who might show up looking for, say, a huge bag of green beans, or maybe 200 eggs or something like that. Other markets, though, they seem more popular with tourists, at least judging by the stuff for sale, like, beaded bracelets and beer shirts and things like that, and also because we saw, give or take, thousands of tourists there.
Mueang Mai Market
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Let’s start with this one because, you know, it’s one of the main local food markets, where I think a lot of restaurant people come to buy supplies and whatnot, but there’s also regular Thai people buying food, too, sometimes normal amounts and sometimes huge amounts, so I guess it’s kind of like the Thai Costco. But without the cheap hot dogs out front. Actually, that’s not true, there WERE cheap hot dogs here, too. But they looked different, kind of curved weird. And with a Thai name that I couldn’t read. But they were definitely tubes of meat, that’s for sure. Plus there were lots of mangos. And a whole range of very cheap meat on sticks. Almost too cheap, if you think about it. And massive piles of raw meat jammed into clear plastic bags, as you’d expect.
What were some of the main takeaways from our time in Mueang Mai Market? Well, first of all, the name basically just means Chiang Mai Market. Mueang is city or something like that. So there was one mystery solved. Which felt pretty good. On the other hand, to get there we walked along a sidewalk right on the river for a bit, kind of slow and relaxed and all, until the urine smell got too bad and we just couldn’t take it anymore. We tried to make it seem not as bad by saying, you know, some of it could be dog piss, right? Like, that’s possible. It’s not ALL human piss, I don’t think. But deep down, I think we knew that it’s probably all human piss.
When we got to the market, we also noticed that there were just, like, SO many fish for sale. Which was a bit surprising because Chiang Mai is nowhere near the ocean. There’s a river, sure, and I don’t mean to sound negative or anything but, to be honest, that river looks pretty damn disgusting. And the little canals aren’t much better. The colour definitely doesn’t make you hungry, that’s for sure.
In general, the food market just has a whole lot of dead things for sale. All kinds of dead things, plus some stuff that looked might it end up dead pretty soon. And they all smelled kind of different, you know, but all still pretty bad. They all had that in common. Hardly any bananas, though, which seemed weird to me. Not because I know a lot about the stuff Thailand grows or anything like that, just mainly because I like bananas and was kind of low-key looking to buy some. If I got the chance, if you know what I mean.
Oh, puddles! Yeah, there were lots of puddles. So you really needed to watch where you walked. I mean, along with watching for all the people, and the stalls, and the random stuff all laid out on blankets on the ground, and the scooters, and the people pulling huge baskets of lettuce. Because there were lots of those things too. But still way more puddles, I think. Not that I have any real problem with puddles, I mean, some of my favourite memories as a kid were of me stepping in huge puddles and having my mom completely freak out, because, seriously, WHY? WHY would you do that? And I never really had a good answer. You know how it is. Or at least no answer that made her feel better about things.
But these puddles were strange, you know, like, you never knew what might be in there. Sometimes they were right next to a fish stand so you could look and say, hey, that’s probably a puddle of fish water and guts and whatnot, and just kind of move on with your day. But some puddles were in random spots and in my head I was all, like, what IS that? Where did it come from? Could it be poisonous? Probably not, but what if? So, in general, I guess the puddles kind of stressed me out.
Anyway, I never did find any bananas that looked good. Not that they looked evil or anything, they were still yellow, mostly yellow, anyway, and more or less the right shape and all, they just didn’t look like the kind of bananas I really wanted to EAT, you know? But we did buy a couple things and, well, it turns out ginger is very cheap in Thailand. But mangos are not. Or maybe they just aren’t cheap for tourists. I watched the woman who sold them to us real close-like, trying to get a read on her, but she had a pretty good poker face. Or maybe that was just the normal price.
Wua Lai Walking Street Saturday Night Market
Every Saturday night this big market sets up just outside the old town, right beside the moat. Yeah, how cool is that, Chiang Mai still has an honest-to-goodness MOAT. No castle, really, or drawbridges, or knights, and definitely no dragons, at least not that we saw, but still, a MOAT.
Anyway, people seem to come from far and wide for the Saturday night market because, ooh baby, it was packed, and it just kept getting busier as it got darker. Maybe people feel better about eating sketchy food and buying stuff they don’t need when it’s dark. I can see that, especially with some of the meat sticks, they definitely looked better when the sun went down.
First thing, of course, Laynni wanted to stop for a mango smoothie. The smoothies, man, they’re really her thing here. Even though the mango ones always have those stringy bits that get jammed between your teeth, or just kind of stick to your tongue, which, to be honest, is a terrible feeling. And trying to grab something off your tongue with your fingers after touching stuff in a night market just isn’t a great idea, in general. Not great for health reasons, obviously, but also not great for the people around watching, at least judging by their expressions. Eventually, we decided they were too lewd and switched to watermelon smoothies.
For supper, we stopped at one of the first food stalls we saw that was selling stuff we recognized, noodles mostly, because we don’t know many other kinds of Thai foods. We ordered pad see ew because it’s our favourite – wide flat noodles with egg and veggies and usually pork – and we were lucky to get a table by ourselves. It even had two chairs, which was the perfect amount, even if they were pretty small and plastic and closer to the ground than your average Canadian chair.
The food, though, it was pretty good. And only 120 baht for both of us, which is less than $C6, and even that was more expensive than normal because, you know, supply and demand and all that. This lady knew how many people were waiting for her noodles so, overall, it was pretty nice of her to only charge that much. But it turns out she drew the line at giving change, since I tried to pay with a 500B bill but, no sir, that was NOT happening, let me tell you.
After supper we started walking down Walking Street, for fairly obvious reasons, I guess, but it was just so full of people that it was actually hard to move, or at least hard to move at a normal pace, since most people were just kind of shuffling along, sort of browsing, sort of looking around, but not really WALKING, not in any way you’d recognize, that’s for sure.
To be honest, we got tired of it pretty quick, partly because we weren’t really looking to buy anything, and partly because every now and then you’d get stuck behind some people trying to walk side-by-side through the crowd holding hands, even though that made no sense at all and just made everything harder for everyone and, like, it’s nice they are in love or scared or just stupid or whatever, but in the end it just wasn’t really the time or place, you know what I mean? So we decided that was enough of that.
Chiang Mai Sunday Walking Street (Rachadamnoen Street)
So that one was Saturday night but, wouldn’t you know it, there is a whole other “Walking Street” on Sunday night, too. Almost like the Sunday folks saw how well those Saturday guys were doing and thought, hey, I want in on that action. Good idea, I’d say, because it was just as busy as the Saturday night market. Maybe even busier, because it was right in the middle of the old town so every block or so there was another Buddhist temple or shrine or statue or something like that.
Sometimes the temples had even been turned into a kind of restaurant or mall or, like, religious shopping experience. To save space and all, I guess. Some of the Buddhas had really gotten a glow-up, too, getting with the times, I suppose. As in, lots of colour and flags and even fluorescent lighting that changed colours every few seconds. The crowd loved that one. Plus a smoke show, like Buddha was the lead singer of a big hair band from the 80’s. Quite the spectacle, I gotta say, it really made Buddhism seem a lot hipper than I expected, hip enough to get a lot of white people to stand around bowing to him after they’d taken their photos and all that. Not hip enough to make me put more money in the special flashy and hip Buddha donation boxes, but still pretty hip.
The non-temple parts of the Sunday market seemed to be more about shopping and less about food, although there was still quite a bit of food, like, there were still hundreds of meat sticks to go around, I’d say. But, no, shopping was definitely the big thing that night and, boy, the amount of different stuff, it was pretty crazy. And I say that as someone who’s been to a mall or two in his day. This was different – hotter, no Dunkin Donuts or anything like that, but still, lots of stuff for sale.
For example, do you like elephants? Because if you like elephants, you would love this place. You could get elephant pants, obviously. I don’t know the official statistics on the sale of elephant pants to tourists but I assume they make up most of Thailand’s economy. But you could also get elephant shirts, say, if maybe you already had enough pants. Or an elephant hat, for those sunny days. Or elephant socks, just because Laynni thought they were cute. Or an elephant onesie for your baby, if you have one of those (a baby, I mean). What baby can’t use another onesie, right? What with all the spitting and shitting and whatnot? Or you could buy elephant ashtrays. Or carvings. Lots of elephant carvings. Stickers, too, how about that? Put ‘em anywhere, really. Anyway, you get the picture.
But there were also a few things without elephants on them, like, say, Muay Thai shorts. I guess the idea is you wear them and people think you are big into Muay Thai fighting. Even if you don’t look like a professional fighter, like, maybe you’re kind of overweight, and pale, and maybe you get out of breath just walking from the hotel but, still, people see you in those shorts they’re bound to think, hey, that guy might be a seriously lethal weapon, in human form. Even if you’re actually just wearing them to go for a smoke in the hot tub and you’re swimming trunks are way too dirty. You never know. So that’s probably worth the $10, I think, for some guys.
There was also lots of penis stuff, too, mostly for the women, I assume, but I’m sure some of the men, too. Like, some very realistic wooden penises with bottle openers attached – it seemed like those could come in handy in a lot of different ways, I bet. Sex stuff, obviously. Opening beers, too, especially if you happen to be doing both things at the same time. And, well, maybe that’s about it. But still, it’s probably pretty handy to be able to open a beer without interrupting all your dildo stuff. There were nice pairs of 7-11 socks, too, if that’s more your thing.
Then, at 6:00 pm exactly, music suddenly started blaring from every direction and a voice came over the loudspeaker, saying a bunch of stuff, all in Thai so we didn’t really understand much, but it sounded pretty serious and immediately everyone just stopped moving. At first I thought they were just trying to hear better and, you know, didn’t want their pants swooshing or whatever. Then I thought, what if it’s one of those sci-fi situations where everyone is frozen in place but us? That would be pretty cool, right? But then the guy next to me started scratching his belly, and a lady in front of us coughed without covering her mouth, so I guess it wasn’t just us. As it turns out, they were just giving us a heads-up that they were about to play the national anthem. The Thai one, I assume. And I guess when the anthem is playing it’s polite to stop moving around and talking and such. But little stuff like scratching and coughing, that’s still ok, I guess.
One thing you couldn’t buy in the market was beer. It turns out, beer wasn’t even allowed on the Walking Street. Or any kind of alcohol. No smoking, either. They made it all pretty clear, first with a bunch of signs and then, just in case you missed the signs, or weren’t really the type to care about signs, every few minutes some woman would come on the loudspeaker and announce that, hey, all you people on Walking Street right now, “no taking alcohol or taking smoking so if you are doing those things, please stop right now”. Which I get, the street was already pretty wild, why make things any crazier than they already were, right? It just kind of sucked, cuz I was really looking forward to trying out my new bottle opener.
Which is why we decided to head back and, man, once we were off Walking Street and back on a normal street, it was really nice, to be honest, because even though it didn’t specifically have “walking” in the name – it was just Loi Kroh Road, I think – it was actually still totally possible to walk there, too. Especially early in the evening because it seemed like the kind of street that would really get going later on, since most of the businesses were kind of directed at guys, I think, ones looking for a bit more of a late-night party atmosphere.
You know, places like cheap restaurants and tattoo shops and a few places that make suits. Also a couple of 7-11s, for snacks, I guess, and LOTS of massage places, probably because of how stressful life is for guys these days, and then the rest of the places were mostly bars, wow, so many bars. And with cool names like Darling Bar, Cherry Blossom, The Shady Lady, The Playhouse and Sleep Over Bar, things like that. One was called I’m Shy Bar, maybe because the girls that hang out there are the shy types, probably just looking for the right guy to come along. Although the ones we saw didn’t look so shy, not dressed like that. So maybe the I Am Virgin Bar would be better, more of a wholesome fun kind of place. Not so strenuous, play some Truth or Dare, maybe, or even Risk, depending on how much time you have.
Summary
Yep, the Chiang Mai markets are something, that’s for sure. Even if you’re not really into shopping. Or walking. Or crowds. Or praying. Or noise. Or puddles of fish water. Mostly because the food is pretty good.
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About the Author
Dean Johnston
Dean Johnston quit his job as a financial planner in 2008 to travel the world, and has now visited all 7 continents and more than 85 different countries. He wrote his first blog entry in a sweltering internet cafe in Bali in 2000 and has been writing about their travels ever since, including publishing 3 travel books.
As Routinely Nomadic, Dean remains focused on providing informative travel guides, entertaining stories and useful social media content to readers from all over the world.