Chiang Mai Market Tour

Our local wet market is a mix of the strange and the familiar.

Some things are familiar to me because I’ve lived in Vietnam and Singapore and frequented the markets there.

Frogs - a familiar sight from wet markets in other Asian countries

Some things are puzzling, and I’m just desperate to experiment with them.

Mysterious flowering vegetables

As I wander around “our” market in Chiang Mai, I think of how I would have viewed the offerings five years ago, before I dropped out and moved to Asia. Five years ago, I would not have been wearing open shoes. I would have had my feet hidden away from any potential germ-laden parasite-infested drips and splashes, even though covered shoes make you extra-hot in a hot climate.

Five years ago I may very well have paid for a tour of a wet market. Now I just drive up and start poking around. I am fluent in the international language of pointing, pricing using raised fingers and pulling faces to indicate disgust or interest.

Five years ago I was anxious about street food. And spicy food. Now, I’m a bit more blase. I still don’t like red meat, so I don’t eat it. (Thank goodness we are in Thailand now where “chicken is king” as Darling Man says. In Vietnam, it’s pork that rules.) But if something doesn’t look like red meat, I’ll give it a go. I may end up with tears streaming down my cheeks and steam hissing out my ears from the super-abundance of chilli in the dish. Or I may spit something out because I don’t like the texture. And if a dish has blood cubes in it, I’ll happily eat around the grossness — whereas four years ago I would not have eaten anything because it was “contaminated” with blood cubes.

I like the layout of our local market. There’s food and drinks at the edge of the market, sausages and herbs and dry goods in the covered indoor section, a “special sealed section” with the raw meat and an outdoorsy section, with each vendor supplying their own umbrella to keep their produce cool. Little grooves in the concrete floor drain away any market sludge, mostly caused by the ice that’s keeping the fresh stuff cool.

Do you like to visit local markets? Can you identify anything in these pics?

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By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.