Bangkok: The Wonders of the Weekend Market

In Bangkok, they love a market.

Any location, it would seem, is a canvas on to which a fleet of market stands can be painted at any given oppotunity, selling anything from fried bugs to knock off designer brands to a carved wooden fertility phallus.

Given this penchant for commercial enterprise you can only imagine what they come up with when they gather together to put on a real market at the weekend.

Except, you can't really imagine it. You can try but unless you have been there and found yourself enveloped within, it's hard to garner an accurate notion of the experience.

The weekend market in Bangkok is not so much a marketplace as a small town. It is so sprawling as to make the idea of seeing everything, feel beyond the capacity of normal human endeavour, yet at the same time so densely packed with produce and populace that you could stand on any given single spot, turn your body 360 degress and see more variety in sights, sounds and smells than your cognitive functions an easily process.

Its like a pressure formed gem of consumption. You take a collection of food stalls, souvenier stands, flower shops, clothes vendors and other such trading posts then you squash them together as tightly as they will go, giving little regard for spacial awareness, then repeat the process over and over until you have a whole independently function organism. You could cut it open at any given point and the sheer amount of compacted diversity that made up the cross section would be enough to overwhelm the average shopper.

Simply getting from the street in to the complex it self is a struggle. There are market stands outside of the market, lining the road between the station and the destination. Once you have avoided all the various toy robot trinkets and overtly enthusiastic cocounut merhcants, you squeeze yourself through an entry side streets, one of many human blood cells being pumped in to the artery that keeps this beast alive.

Once inside you find yourself on the outer rim, a winding road that runs around the edge of the main market place, something that wouldn't seem out of place in a science fiction film. You see everything from performing school choirs, mumbling blind alms collectors, squid ball stands, kebab stands, ice cream vendors, traditional thai dancers, even the occasional ladyboy.

Once you gather your senses enough to venture inside, you take one of the narrow inlets to the main complex and prepare to have them all blown again. It is overload in every capacity. People moving in confined spaces that seem to defy the laws of physics, the sounds of vendors calling you from all sides, trying to draw attention to their wares, the smells of every conceivable food, flower, perfume, product and indeed waste recepticle bombarding you with little thought for invitation.

At this stage in my journey my bag is too full to take on any greater load and its too early for souveniers. I also think I have a lot of haggling banter to perfect. As such I only purchased one lone wristband to start what I hope will be a booming collection over the course of my journey. I was here to observe as opposed to partake, even though that was a whole experience to itself.

I will return to Bangkok in the coming months, and likely return to the market. Maybe then I can play the part of the all conquering consumer. I would say that is as likely as pigs flying but then if there was anywhere you might expect to see such a sight, it would be here.