Following the Herd: 12 Hours in Chatujak Market
Overheard on the Skytrain to Mo Chit, the gateway to Chatujak Market, Bangkok’s largest wholesale venue: ‘People have gone inside and have never been seen or heard from again….’
Warning. If you are prone to any of the following:
Claustrophobia;
A hatred of breathing second hand air;
A phobia for sweating;
Sudden pedestrian rage;
Reluctance to rub shoulders with the masses....
then avoid Chatujak like THE PLAGUE.
However, if you love shufflin' along eyes scannin’ fingers stroking’ hard bargainin’ quick currency calculatin' then welcome to one of Asia’s most colorful markets….
Moooo!
At six o’clock on a Saturday morning, Chatujak looks pretty tame. Stalls are shuttered, security guards are casually smoking cigarettes, and the only sounds are bands of Soi dogs growling at each other in the chilly morning air. Wandering around the complex gets me strange looks from the odd person I came across; surely I wasn’t that stupid to think I could shop so early?
Farangs have done stranger things.
But come eight o’clock, the trucks have started to arrive: huge bales of clothing, material, handbags, leather goods, shoes, furniture, books, antiques, ceramics, and dozens of other products are being unloaded and carted to stalls that are beginning to spring to life.
By eight thirty, restaurants are open, all steaming woks and boiling pots of soup, serving seated traders with tightly set jaws, anticipating the marathon of shopping hordes they would have to endure.
‘Soon, people come,’ said a jovial woman minding her stall selling freshly squeezed orange juice.
And come they did.
Still, it was two hours before major parts of the market were open. By eleven the hordes had really begun to arrive: the Skytrain was a virtual airport concourse, spitting out a near constant stream of passengers, who marched towards the gates like a rag tag army not in search of scalps or territory.
This army was in search of bargains.
Spilling out in droves from the Skytrain, subway, taxis, buses and private cars, the human current was so strong it was like water emptying down a drain, a black hole; you were simply swept along in the human tsunami until deposited in a section where escape was now totally impossible. Squeezed into the narrow alleys so tightly it proved the theory wrong:
Toothpaste actually does go back into the tube.
As I was carried along by the people wave, I realized there is definitely a distinctive Chatujak smell: Exhaust fumes. Incense smoke. Grilled chicken. Tanned leather. Sweat. Freshly carved wood. Humidity. Wet fur.
As I found myself in Section 5, I was surrounded by hundreds of pairs of second hand Levis jeans and Converse sneakers, practically the uniform for self respecting young hip Thais. I ran into three Japanese buyers who were handing over tens of thousands of Baht for several bales they were shipping to Osaka.
‘Japanese young people love second hand American jeans,’ said one of them.
‘From Thailand?’ I asked
He nodded.
Surging forward with the crowd, faster and faster, the stalls along the warren of alleys were crammed with everything from hand carved Buddhas, Khmer scarves, wax candles, plastic fruit, puppies, tropical fish, furniture, battered magazines, tattoo shops, second hand patches, US postal uniforms, and more.
Want vintage Pan Am bags? Try Section 5
Want a Gilded Buddha to add to your mantelpiece? Try section 26
Want a Camp Ninnewaka T-shirt? Try Section 4
Want second hand National Geographic or Playboy magazines? Try Section 23
For almost two hours I was almost powerless to escape the violent, surging crowds; stop for a second, and someone behind you would crash into you; want to turn left at the next junction? Well, you can’t, said the crowd, and onwards it pushed me until suddenly I'm out in the daylight, standing next to a shop selling plastic fruit and real fruit side by side. The owner was a tattooed lady with a cowboy hat on, pink leather boots scraping the cement sidewalk with her toe as she called for customers in three languages.
By 1 p.m. the market is at it’s most packed. ‘This is what a blood cell feels like,’ I thought. When I mentioned this to a French lady next to me, equally breathless, sweaty, and harried, she laughed and said, ‘The heart. It must be around here somewhere, but something we haven’t seen yet.’
The ‘heart’ kept pushing us on, until I turned a corner and the French woman was gone, swept in a different direction. I was now traveling with a couple of Americans, until they too were washed away down an alley and out of sight. Then it was a family from Taiwan, before they disappeared, then it was a group of Japanese.
As I moved on, snatches of conversation floated up from the drains:
A red faced American housewife was counting out loud as she frantically went about furnished her house: “I need six goblets….. six sets of silverware….. eighteen plates…..’
‘N’est pas la meme chose!’ shouted a French guy at a sales girl who was holding a Von Dutch t-shirt. ‘Give me back zee ozer one,’ he snarled.
‘Don’t let go of my hand!’ ordered a British mum to her two kids. They were red faced, sweating and probably wondering why their mum had dragged them to this market in the first place.
An American importer from New York was on the phone with headquarters negotiating a shipment of Burmese antiques. “No, she wants fifty thousand Baht for the whole shebang,’ he shouted in a thick Brooklyn twang into his cell phone. ‘Yes, for everything!’
A Thai lady boy loped past me, dressed up to resemble Kill Bill’s Go Go Yubari, face frozen in a wide smile with white Geisha makeup smeared across her face.
The heat, crowds or both had seemed to put Go Go in a bad mood; she wouldn’t talk to anyone.
In less than five minutes in Chatujak, you could buy a pair of fake Nikes; bargain for a Buddha; take a few steps further, and buy a kitten from one of the cages that surround you; a few meters beyond, and it’s all gurgling fish tanks where 10 cent fish swim next to $100 fish; and down beyond that, rows of shops selling piles of knock off everything right in front of others selling thousand dollar antiques. A few meters even further and it’s knock off Hello Kitty and kids barking ‘No Photo!’ to people wanting to photograph Thai amulets and chunky turquoise jewelry from Tibet. A few feet even more, and you could roll up your sleeves and get a trendy tattoo, while sipping a cup of iced Thai coffee.
Though Chatujak has a strong working class vibe, like a lot of places in Thailand, it’s the young, under 20 crowd that dictate what is hot on the cool meter at Chatujak. Stick to the perimeter fence around Section 2 and 3 and you will find where all the hip designers who can’t afford rent at Siam Square will be; all skinny jeans and cheeky t-shirts and funky handbags crammed between tiny stalls selling bulky watches and patches.
Stalls cost $100 a month, one proprietor told me, you only have to work two days a week to pay for living expenses for the rest of the week…it was so lucrative that there was a years long waiting list to even rent a stall, despite the size of the place, she went on.
Here, amidst the tattoo'd, hipper-than-you Thai guys who sneered at the beer bellied package tourists that gawked at the merchandise and balked at the prices. (‘This ain’t Khao San,’ growled one vendor at a tourist; he winked at me when he saw me smirk.) The crowds reached the most Chatujakesque crushing levels here too, and when a brief monsoon shower was followed by bright sunlight, the air became unbreathable, the gurgling streams grated with metal that threatened to twist an ankle un-walkable, and the smokers that exhaled in your face, intolerable, finally tempers boiled over, and several scuffles broke out and one was tempted to scream ‘MOOOOOOOO……..!!!’ at the molasses slow movement of the crowds.
The heartbeat of Chatujak pumped me right out into the street, and there lining the outer rim: dusty antiques; yellowed animal skulls; crusty plates found in the ocean; bright photos from the royal family and all kinds of Buddhist amulets that ranged from animal bones to carved wooden penises to tiny metal talismans.
By four o’clock the heat has subsided, and Chatujak had popped an artery: crowds pulsed out from the narrow alleys, and migrated back to the SkyTrain, taxis, private cars and buses, and the alleys were once again deserted. Soi dogs returned, feasting on all the food left behind, and even the security guards were gone.
When I boarded the Skytrain myself, I was wondering why everyone was looking at me. Then I looked down. I had no bags; I hadn’t bought a thing at Chatujak, and as I stood there I felt naked. To them, even after the free, freakish entertainment they had enjoyed at Chatujak, I was the strangest thing they had seen all day.
Mooo!