Chatuchak
(Chatuchak market: Bangkok)
I have been itching to come to this market since hearing about it and anticipated that even if I didn’t buy anything, the spectacle of such a huge city market would be enough to amuse us for an entire day. In the end, we couldn’t hold back and bought beautifully printed t shirts, fresh juice and honey on the comb; the lady selling it told us that sometimes there are larvae hiding in the comb but that they are considered a delicacy by some. I’ll let you know if we find any. All afternoon, I was astounded by the smells; the smoke of barbequed snacks, the pungent aroma of crisp preserved cuttlefish laid out in rows of size, the sweetness of freshly squeezed fruit, the rotting drains, the sharp smell of newly dyed fabric, tanned leather, the tang of sweat from all the moist bodies in the 33 degree humidity. In three hours we must have covered a tenth of it, and its smells.
Last night I was treated to dinner in a very local Thai restaurant nearby; Pete, his father and I shared around six dishes, all with exciting differences; some sour, sweet, herbal, fragrant or spicy to a painful extreme. We finished with a bowl of ice and palm fruit (traditionally used to make palm sugar) which had the texture of soft coconut and a similarly fragrant flavour.
As I type this in Pete’s lounge, there is a gecko about four centimetres long marching about on the ceiling. I can’t stop myself from checking on its progress every few words, it is such a novelty to find so many animals in a home that I have never encountered. I much prefer little brown geckos to the huge hairy spiders I keep uncovering in Britain. I regard the geckos and oversized beetles with intrigue rather than fear, which I reserve for the spiders.
