4 August 2018, Saturday
As I arrived late in Bangkok yesterday, I didn’t have much time to explore the city last night. Today, I had a full day ahead of me and I was raring to go. At 8:30am, I had breakfast at my hostel. It was a simple spread of toast, cereal and coffee. It wasn’t very fulfilling but that was the plan, because I wanted to stuff myself with delicious food from everywhere else.
At 9:20am, I left the hostel and walked for two minutes to Ratchathewi BTS station. My first destination for the day was Chatuchak Weekend Market. I bought a single trip ticket to Mo Chit and it cost 40 Baht (S$1.60). The ride took only about 12 minutes as Mo Chit was just six stops away.
Chatuchak is the largest market in Thailand, covering an area of 27 acres and containing a mind-boggling 15,000 booths. An estimated 200,000 people visit the market each day during the weekend, comprising 70% locals and 30% tourists. Hence, it attracts a largely local crowd and therein lies its appeal, unlike some other markets, which are very touristy. The market is open on Friday and Saturday nights (from 10pm to 5am) and the whole day on Saturdays and Sundays (8am to 10pm), so I had timed my visit well.
There are three main gates to the market. Gates 2 and 3 are close to Mo Chit BTS station and Chatuchak Park MRT station, while Gate 1 is close to Khampaeng Phet MRT station. To make it convenient for shoppers to navigate around the sprawling grounds, the entire market is divided into 30 Sections. The Sections are broadly separated into categories such as Used Clothing & Shoes, Teen Clothing & Accessories, Antiques and Dried Food among other categories.
I entered via Gate 3 and found myself at Sections 16. When I arrived at 9:40am, it was already crowded with throngs of eager bargain-hunters. I didn’t really have anything in mind so I just walked around aimlessly. Part of the fun is getting lost among the never-ending maze of stalls and discovering something interesting along the way.
After browsing for an hour, I was ready for some food. It was another scorching day (30 degrees Celsius) so I was naturally drawn to an ice-cream stall called ChocoNana. The ice-cream came in several interesting flavours like mangosteen, melon and pineapple. You could also add toppings like peanuts, almonds, cashew nuts and rainbow sprinkles.
I had never tried mangosteen ice-cream before so I chose that, and added rainbow sprinkles, all for 50 Baht (S$2). I realised that it would have better without the sprinkles because it masked the taste of the mangosteen. The whole concoction was very sweet and I could not taste the mangosteen flavour at all, so I was slightly disappointed.
As I drifted into Sections 2 and 3, I found myself surrounded by shops selling hip and trendy clothes. The fashion here appealed to the younger crowd (like me!) and this was where I did all my shopping. I bought a T-shirt depicting a vegetarian shark with the words “Sharkasm” (200 Baht/S$8) and a Thailand “passport” notebook (20 Baht/S$0.80).
I then came across a shop selling customised camera straps called Yes Idid. It was slightly pricey at 480 Baht (S$19.20) but I thought it was very cool, so I customised a strap for my DSLR camera.
While waiting for my camera strap to be ready, I walked around and saw a shop selling T-shirts with really cute prints of Shiba Inu dogs drawn in Japanese cartoon style. It was just a tiny little shop with no name, but it was located at Section 3, Address No. 095, Soi 43/1. The shop was attracting a healthy crowd so it was hard for me to browse through the designs properly. I did a fast game and bought a T-shirt (190 Baht/S$7.60) and a casual sling bag (600 Baht/S$24), both adorned with huge smiling faces of the Shiba Inu. I felt happy just by looking at them.
After collecting my camera strap at 1pm, I decided I was done with Chatuchak. The market is really huge and you can easily spend the whole day shopping here. But it is also very hot because the stalls are packed close together with little ventilation between the aisles. I threw in the towel after spending less than four hours here. On the way out, I grabbed a cup of Thai iced milk tea with jelly to cool myself down.
My second destination was Platinum Fashion Mall. As I was lazy (and also because it was too hot to walk), I booked a Grab Bike (95 Baht/S$3.80) to take me there. Having experienced Grab Bike in Vietnam, I found it a convenient mode of transport because it was fast and easily available everywhere. The service is especially important in Bangkok, where the traffic situation is so bad and you can get stuck in taxis for a long time without moving much.
However, the traffic in Bangkok is much heavier than in Vietnam, with much more cars and fewer motorbikes on the road. Hence, I felt somewhat less safe when riding pillion on the Grab Bike as my driver weaved between the cars. The car drivers here were also less accommodating towards motorcyclists and do not give way as much as the drivers in Vietnam. Nevertheless, I arrived safely at my destination without incident.
Platinum Fashion Mall is one of the most popular shopping places in Bangkok. With five floors and one basement level of shopping, the mall has over 1,300 shops specialising in wholesale fashion clothing and accessories. There are clothes for women, men and children so everyone can shop here. Best of all, the mall is air-conditioned and the shops are properly spaced out, so the shopping experience here is very pleasant.
Like Chatuchak, you should also exercise your bargaining powers when shopping here at Platinum Fashion Mall. As it is a wholesale mall, the prices will be better if you buy more. However, you can still buy one or two pieces if you don’t need so many. Chatuchak has more interesting items for sure, but it was nice to come here to enjoy the air-conditioning for a while.
At 3:20pm, I was getting hungry again so I walked to the nearby Pantip Plaza mall to have my late lunch at A&W. Whenever I visit Bangkok, I will always make it a point to eat at A&W because the beloved fast-food chain disappeared from our Singapore shores in 2003 (before making a comeback in 2019). I ordered a root beer float, ice-cream waffle and curly fries (179 Baht/S$7.61) – all my favourites. I felt contented after that. I then walked back to my hostel to deposit all my shopping and took a quick rest before heading out again at about 4:30pm.
Yesterday, I met a fellow solo traveller, SB, who stayed in the same hostel as me in Siem Reap and we subsequently took the same bus to Bangkok. We later shared a taxi to our respective accommodations here and exchanged contacts. We decided to meet up again today since we were both travelling independently and could use some companionship.
Since SB is Japanese, I suggested making a trip to Yunomori Onsen & Spa (click here) for a soak. Yunomori is the first authentic Japanese onsen and spa in Thailand. Bangkok does not have any natural thermal springs but Yunomori sources its water directly from the hot springs of Wat Wangkanai in Kanchanburi province, some 100km away. That’s a long way to transport the water over!
From my hostel, I took a Grab Bike (89 Baht/S$3.78) and arrived at Yunomori at 4:50pm. After meeting up with SB, we each paid 450 Baht (S$18) and proceeded to enjoy a relaxing time soaking in the hot baths.
At 7pm, we left Yunomori feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. We walked to Queen Sikrit National Convention Centre MRT station and took the subway train to our next destination, Rot Fai Market Ratchada, also known as Train Night Market Ratchada. We alighted at Thailand Cultural Centre station, just four stops away. The single-trip ride cost 23 Baht (S$0.92).
Before visiting the market, SB wanted to head over to the adjacent building to snap some photos. He had done some research online and found that the best spot to capture the famous aerial view of the market was from the 5th level of the car park at Esplanade Ratchada shopping mall, which overlooked the market directly. When we reached, we discovered that we were not the only ones there. Seemed like everyone knew about this “secret” spot as well.
From there, we saw the entire Rot Fai Market Ratchada spread out across the rectangular plot of land below us, with hundreds of stalls lined up neatly in compact rows. Each booth was lit up and their multi-coloured canopies gave the appearance of a large quiltwork from this vantage point. It was a very pretty sight. Unfortunately, my iPhone was not equipped with a wide-angled lens so I couldn’t capture the entire scene in one shot.
After getting our fix of photos, we went back to the ground level to visit the market. Here’s a little bit of history about the market. The original Rot Fai Market was located next to the train tracks behind Chatuchak Market, in the north of the city. Hence, its name, Rot Fai, which means “train” in Thai (of course, “Rot Fai” is an anglicised spelling of the actual Thai word).
In 2013, the market was forced to move because of the expansion of the BTS Skytrain network. It relocated to an area called Srinakarin, beside Seacon Square shopping mall. This new site is bigger and better than the original site, but it is located far from downtown Bangkok and not well-connected by public transport.
In 2015, a new incarnation of the market opened at the Ratchada area. It is smaller than the one at Srinakarin but much more accessible and it became very popular. Hence, the second market was named Rot Fai Market Ratchada to differentiate it from the Srinakarin one. Both markets are still operating, so be careful when you book a taxi or Grab and make sure you enter the correct destination. Both markets operate at night from 5pm to 1am.
As seen from the car park above earlier, the booths at Rot Fai Market Ratchada were very neatly arranged but the aisles were very narrow. With the huge crowds constantly pushing you to move, it was difficult to pause at a stall to look at something that caught your eye. As such, I won’t say that it is a very good place for shopping because it is just too crowded.
However, the food was the real highlight here. There were countless stalls selling all kinds of interesting food – grilled fish and giant prawns, tantalising seafood platters, a huge pork ribs dish that seemed very popular, and even a durian buffet. The strange thing was that they were grilling the durians over charcoal. Why ruin perfectly good durian?!
For our dinner, we settled on a stall selling Thai food. We ordered tom yum soup, an omelette and spiced chicken cubes to share, and rounded it off with two bottles of Chang beer. It was a good dinner.
At 9:45pm, we called it a night. The vibe at Rot Fai Market Ratchada was nice but it was also quite noisy with loud music all around. We were also stuffed so we weren’t able to try any more of the food. We walked back to the MRT station but found it packed with people. The queue was also very long.
As I was feeling quite tired by now, I decided to book a Grab Bike ride (80 Baht/S$3.40) back to my hostel instead of taking the subway. I was also lazy because there was no direct connection and I had to change to the BTS Skytrain halfway through. Anyway, I bade farewell to SB as we went our separate ways. It was nice to have a like-minded companion for a few hours, after travelling solo for the past two weeks. Time to pack my bags again as I will be moving on from Bangkok to Hat Yai tomorrow!