Jampacked in Jatujak Market

Woke up, had breakfast at the hotel buffet, and boarded a Bangkok Sky Train for the Jatujak Sunday Market, which is perhaps the largest bazaar-styled market I’ve ever been to. As you get closer to the Market, the trains get more crowded, filled with both tourists and Thai folks, all with that expectant-consumer eagerness filling their eyes. While approaching the Sunday Market on the train, you watch it approach, a veritable quilt of flimsy roofing that goes on for what looks like a few city blocks. The Market is such a sprawling challenge that you really could wander for hours on end, and never find your way back to where you started. I spent 3 ½ hours wandering through the maze of shops and stalls, and came away with two large plastic bags full of gifts, handicrafts, clothes, and more. I could’ve stayed a couple more hours, but I was running low on cash, and had pretty much had enough of the heat. Some of what I saw was also hard to deal with, ranging from the stench of the enclosed dried fish stalls (in Bengali we call that kind of dried fish Shutki, and you can smell the open air Shutki bazaar a hundred meters away. Imagine the density of that smell in confined quarters) to the pet market, which was stall after stall of some of the most adorable little puppies I’ve ever seen.

Some of these puppies looked less than a week old. They were sleeping in enclosed pens, waiting for owners to purchase them, and others were in cages. There were also aquariums hawking exotic fish, and little mice, baby squirrels, baby chickens, and all kinds of wildlife available to buy. It was an interesting section to stumble across, but I was glad when I found my way out, because there’s only so many adorable puppies I can have barking at me before I’ll need to buy one…




Anyhow. I heard that most of the GPC delegation was at the Sunday Market, but it just goes to show you how big it is, cause I only ran into two of the folks I came with. I heard later some folks ate at the some of the stalls and low key restaurants littered around the Market, but I chose to head home. My loss, I guess, but I did manage to catch a few hours of prime-time sun while lounging at the pool. Probably missed a few purchases, but whatever. Tropical sun is priceless, and I have two more days to shop around in the consumer paradise of cheap and beautiful goods that is Bangkok…