Chatuchak Weekend Market; Or Tor Kor Market
My guidebook says that Chatuchak Weekend Market is an outdoor market on steroids. I don’t know about the legality of nonprescription steroids in Bangkok and I’m not interested, but I don’t think that’s what it means.
It also says that Chatuchak Weekend Market sells everything under the sun. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. My guidebook says it’s an outdoor market. It’s sunny today. How could it not sell its wares under the sun?
Of course, it probably meant that it sells everything there is. I think it’d be super cool to own a rock from Mars. However, the market probably restricts it just to things on Earth. The Ark of the Covenant would be an amazing object to have, but it’s probably beyond my budget.
Nevertheless, Chatuchak Weekend Market sounded like a worthwhile visit.
Completing my market morning, after leaving Chatuchak Weekend Market, I walked a couple of minutes to Or Tor Kor Market.
Chatuchak Weekend Market
I’ll provide a link to the website for Chatuchak Weekend Market here, but you might not want to use it. It does appear to be the market’s official website, but there was a lot of advertising for other things, including a pop-up ad when I visited it. I guess they need whatever revenue they can get.
Chatuchak Weekend Market is not what I pictured it to be based on the description in my guidebook. When it said it was an outdoor market, I expected myriad stalls out in the, not to put a fine point on it, open air.
That’s not the case. Almost the entire market is covered by a solid, seamless roof. True, the sides are all open. And some of the peripheral stalls do see the open sky. But Chatuchak Weekend Market is huge. Despite the sides being open, the interior requires artificial lighting even on a bright, sunny day like today because natural light can’t penetrate deep into the shopping jungle that is Chatuchak Weekend Market.
And when I say huge, I do indeed mean huge. There are narrow aisles upon narrow aisles, and intersecting narrow aisles upon intersecting narrow aisles.
The market offers lots and lots of clothing. Shirts, pants, shorts, dresses, skirts, hats, and underwear of all sorts and styles are all represented there. There are also a lot of household decorative items, including flowers (mostly authentic-looking plastic) and inexpensive paintings and photographs.
But, wait. There’s more.
The aisles also contain luggage, backpacks, purses and other bags. Do you want jewelry? They’ve got jewelry. And fabrics, toys, knickknacks, pet beds, lamps, and tableware (a lot of wood utensils, bowls and plates, but also ceramic and metal).
There are also stalls selling essential oils, essential oil diffusers and, less so, incense. Essential oils and incense seem to be big here. There’s a combined essential oil diffuser and incense stick holder in my room at my hotel. The diffuser is a small, shallow bowl that sits in a holder above a tea candle. The hotel provides a small box of matches to activate them.
Every day, the hotel staff puts a different diluted essential oil in the diffuser and an intense stick in the incense stick holder. There’s a menu beside it that says what type of essential oil and what type of incense stick they leave in the room each day of the week. A different essential oil and incense each day. The menu also says what each is supposed to do for you in terms of your health and well-being.
Yes, I’ve been using them. No, I haven’t felt any of the benefits I’m supposed to feel.
But back to Chatuchak Weekend Market.
Scattered throughout the market are some massage stalls and eat-in food stalls. Except for the eat-in food stalls, I didn’t see many foodstuffs to buy and take home. The only exceptions were a couple, literally a couple, of stalls that sold spices and dried herbs.
A few, a very few, of the stalls, primarily the massage stalls, were glass-walled and air-conditioned.
Oh, and I travelled literally halfway around the world from Toronto to Bangkok—there’s precisely a twelve-hour difference between Toronto and Bangkok—and what did I spy in one of the stalls at Chatuchak Weekend Market? A Toronto Raptors basketball jersey. That’s what. No, I didn’t buy it. I’m not a sports fan and even if I were I wouldn’t buy Toronto sports paraphernalia in Bangkok. That’s why Toronto exists.
There were several customers at Chatuchak Weekend Market when I was there (or possibly just damned tourists walking aimlessly up and down the aisles because their guidebooks told them it was a must-see.) But it was not in the least overcrowded.
There is no way I could walk up and down every aisle. There were just too many and my shopping tolerance is just too short. To me, shopping is a necessary evil, with an emphasis on evil.
Nevertheless, I spent a lot of time in Chatuchak Weekend Market. I’m here to tell you that despite the myriad, eclectic products for sale there, “everything under the sun” was a bit of an exaggeration. For example, I never did find the Ark of the Covenant. Then again, maybe it was in one of the many aisles I missed. Or maybe it doesn’t exist, in which case Chatuchak Weekend Market is excused for not offering it for sale.
As a way to take in a little local colour, it was worth the visit.
Or Tor Kor Market
My guidebook said that if you’re not in Bangkok on the weekend you should visit the nearby Or Tor Kor Market, which is open seven days a week.
I was in Bangkok on the weekend. Today, for example, is Saturday. And I did, as evidenced by the previous section, visit Chatuchak Weekend Market. But because it’s only a few minutes’ walk away, I decided to visit Or Tor Kor Market as well.
Or Tor Kor Market is covered too, but it’s otherwise completely different, and not just because it’s significantly smaller than Chatuchak Weekend Market, but also because the product range is almost entirely different.
This is primarily a food market. It offers fruits, vegetables, dry foods, fish and seafood, and a couple of red meat stalls.
Or Tor Kor Market also has eat-in food stalls. Unlike Chatuchak Weekend Market, the stalls here are concentrated in one section rather than scattered throughout.
There is a little bit of clothing, bags, and knickknacks on sale at Or Tor Kor Market, but not nearly as much as Chatuchak Weekend Market. Not even close. In fact, they’re quite rare at Or Tor Kor.
Aside
BTS
My morning started kind of slowly and I got a later start than usual. By the time I had my fill of Or Tor Kor Market, it was too late to squeeze another activity into the morning. But it was a little early for lunch. So I decided to head to my first planned afternoon site and have lunch there.
Getting there involved taking the BTS for the first time. I mentioned the BTS before, but this is the first time I rode it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the BTS is a train that runs on elevated rails. It competes with the MRT, a subway system, and they don’t have integrated ticketing. Once I figured out how to use a credit card on the MRT, it was simple to use. Tap on with a Visa card at the fare gate where you get on, and tap off at the gate when you leave. (It’s distance-based pricing.)
I had to go to a ticket window at the BTS to find out, but you can’t tap any type of credit card on their fare gates. The ticket seller told me this, and a colleague behind her confirmed it. You have to buy a paper ticket or buy one of their stored value cards and load money on it, which gets deducted for each trip. (It’s also distance-based pricing.
I bought a ticket because I didn’t know if I’d be using the BTS again. The tickets are electronically encoded. You tap it on the fare gate when you enter, then put it in a slot that eats it when you leave.
The advantage of the BTS is that, because the trains travel on elevated tracks, you get to see the city along the way. The MRT, on the other hand, travels underground. If you look out the window you see tunnel walls.
However, the MTR is much easier to use because of the credit card tap-on/tap-off option.
Discover more from Joel's Journeys & Jaunts
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Add a Comment
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
You can honestly say that you saw a lot of stuff this morning. A LOT of stuff. A boggling amount of stuff. It must be comforting for the people of Bangkok to know there is someplace other than Amazon they can go to get whatever they need. If they need a good kick in the pants they could probably ask someone there to oblige. You don’t need a rock from Mars or the Ark of the Covenant, and don’t argue that you do. Happiness might be nice, and they have Lucky Cats and essential oils and other promising avenues in that direction, so at least they are trying.
BUT I WANT THE ARK OF THE COVENANT AND A MARS ROCK!
But, yeah.There was certainly a lot of stuff there. More stuff than you can shake a stick at unless it’s a really, really, really long stick. And then it would probably be too heavy to lift and shake. But why you would want to do that anyway is beyond me.