Adventures By Design

In which the travelers do not contribute to the economy of Chiang Mai.

Today was a very lazy and relaxing day. We hung out at our hotel, read our books, and swam in the pool a bit. Ric also did a lot of work updating the software for this blog. Gin doesn’t really understand most of this, so she just read her book and took a few naps. All that was the height of our activity during the day.

In the evening we got a little more adventurous and ventured out to see the Sunday walking street market. Every Sunday in Chiang Mai they close several streets to motor traffic and hundreds of vendors set up stalls on the sides and middle of the roads. When we were in Chiang Mai a year and a half ago we really wanted to see this market, but Gin had been felled by a nasty bout of food poisoning. Janet (Gin’s mom who we were traveling with) did get to the market and thought it was fantastic so this time we made a point to visit it.

The market was insanely crowded and we aren’t sure if it’s like that every week, or if it was extra busy because of the Song Kran holiday. We wandered around the streets checking out all the stalls. At first we were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of goods being sold. However, as we walked around more we realized how similar most of the products were. There is a limited number of stalls selling silver jewelry that you can look at before things become distinctly repetitive. We did ask the price on one lovely silver bracelet, but it was 1850 baht (about $55, way too much for a simple bracelet of questionable quality off the side of the street). The only thing Ric was interested in was a pair of leather sandals to replace the ones that he bought at the Chatuchak market in Bangkok. It isn’t surprising that these sandals caught his attention because they were actually identical to the ones from Bangkok. Unfortunately the above-mentioned sandals started to fall apart before we had even left the market. Having learned his lesson, Ric wasn’t really interested in wasting another $15.

Regardless of some of the short-comings of the market, and its vendors, we had a nice time walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. There was a lot of beautiful art and some funky and stylish lamps and other home décor items. However, we are currently less than two weeks into a four month trip, and we don’t really want to carry home décor around for the next three and a half months. In the end we enjoyed the market but didn’t buy anything.