Chatuchak Weekend market has history going back near 100 years, it has moved around a bit – but as of now it is located in, Chatuchak.
You can reach it by both tuktuking and taxi, ut by far the best way to get there is the BTS (tram), the stop closes to the market is called Mo Chit, be prepeared for crowds on both BTS and the 100 meter walk to the market.
Once there you will get an idea of the size, but you wont really understand it.
The market get around 200.000 (!) visitors each weekend, and its supposed to be the worlds largest market – it is absolutley massive!
It has aroud 15-16.000 stalls, containing absolutley everything. I have never seen a place like this in my life.. my god!
We just walked in and picked a direction, and then walked and walked.. and walked. There is no end to it. And I cant see that you would be able to get trough it all in a day, or even two.
The is tons of shoes, shirts, pants, western wear (I saw like three shops with that stuff) and fake flowers.. fake fruit.. toys.. kitchenweare.. art.. pillows and perfume. Absolutley everything you can think of – there is at least one stall for this.
What sets this aside your regular market, is that there is actual cool stuff here. Where most markets pretty much have smthe same stuff – here there are local artist that has set up shop. And its just not your regular tshirt shop, its a tshirt shop specializing in retro coca cola shirts.. as an example. There is army surpluss in massive amounts, and lots of shops selling vintage sneakers. Its really a fun place to walk around, even if your not into markets – this is something else.
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What gets to you after a while is the size, it just goes on and on and on. You can walk for hours and constantley see something new. And also – there is a lot more ‘fixed prices’ here, and the salespeople wont nag at you constantley.
There are quite a few food options to, and lots of the shops has small cafes at the back of their shops – serving 4-6-8 people at the time with coffee and snacks.
We walked around here for a couple of hours just lloking and stopping for drinks – the heat is pretty bad, but most of this is under a roof/massive collection of riofs/umberellas, so you will manage – bring water.
We might do another trip out here tomorrow, pick up some shorts n shirts.. souveniers and presents.
I bought a belt and Maren bought some clothes, haggeling was really not a big thing – if you bought more items you could get a small discount, but really not to much.
When we walk trough the stalls we kept saying to eachother that “we have to be getting close to the end of it now??!” – but no, it goes on and on.
There is a directory someplace that tells you where what is, so lets say ‘books’ – there will be info on what area thats in. But it was fun just walking around looking at all the different stuff. And also very nice to stop by a few places for a cold drink. The market is very little naggy, people wil let you look and browse without comming to you and pushing you into buying.
You will have to bring cash here, but a lot of the local artist have terminals so that you also can use visa.
There was even a tattoo parlor, and I was thinking about getting one just to spend an hour in the AC they had.
And of course, a prayer room – I wonder if that had AC ??
A relly cool place to walk around for a few hours, just because there was some much different stuff everywhere.
We did a tuktuk back to the hotell, to for ages to get trough traffic, the tram is probably best. We are planning a trip here again tomorrow, sunday, Im not sure – but it might be a bit more crowded then..
