Markets, Flea, Food and Otherwise

Eileen didn’t have to work yesterday so she and Kristina squired us about the city. In the morning we headed out to Chatuchack which is an enormous indoor/outdoor market that carries everything from throwing stars and diamond earrings to t-shirts and produce, though naturally, none of those products were sold at the same shop. It was swamped with tourists, which is fine and well, if you’re into that sort of thing.

We weren’t in the market for anything as we are at the beginning of our travels and would rather discard material than take more on. Kristina did buy us some snack thing that came wrapped in betel nut and was served on skewers. You eat the whole thing and as Hilary said, “it’s like an explosion of flavor.” We think it was filled with shrimp, some kind of nut and some citrus fruit, but we’re not entirely certain. They were very good, but there was no way we were going to be able to finish the 5-6 skewers that we had. Hilary accidentally left them at the restaurant where we ate anyway.



After Chatuchack we went across the street to a rather large market and got some fruit and vegetables. The market was rather sizeable and had all kinds of fruits, many of which we had never seen before, and could well have been aliens from another planet (rather than from another country). The big pink thing with the flippers is called a dragon fruit, the purple thing with the coconut like top is a mangosteen and the red, hairy thing is called a rambutan. You have to split them open to get at the fruit of all of these. I haven’t tried the dragon fruit yet but the mangosteens are extremely sweet and fibrous while the rambutan pale white and is a lot like lychee in appearance, taste and texture. We’ve eaten a lot of the rambutan.

After the markets, we went back to the house and Kristina cooked up a fantastic dinner. She made a really good tomato-cream sauce with some button mushrooms we got at the market. And when we finished, we head out to a weekly flea market that, contrary to Chatuchak, was bereft of tourists. The flea market was held in a parking lot and was somewhat of a Vespa expo. We should’ve taken some pictures but we didn’t.

The variety was stunning. You could find Vespa parts, rotary phones, stuffed animals and used shoes all at one booth or on one tarp (many of the goods were sold on tarps much like at a garage sale). Often, I wasn’t sure how any of the things could ever be sold or where they came from to start with. There were even mice and rabbits available, which Eileen assured us were not to become pets but rather food. Also, I’m pretty certain that band t-shirts come to this flea market like aging music acts go to county fairs, which is to say, as a last ditch effort to stay popular. Again, we did not purchase anything, though many of the rotary phones were tempting.

Kristina and Eileen have been fantastic. They've made the adjustment to Thailand so much easier and we'd like everyone to know how much we appreciate all their help and guidence since we arrived. This whole thing would've been so much more difficult for us without them. Thank you.