Something that we have experienced here that we did not see in the south is the markets.  The beach town in the south had all sorts of shops and little markets, and even variants of night markets where vendors set up shop in the streets to sell there trinkets or street food, but Chiang Mai seems to take this to a different level.  Here there is a daily Night Bazaar, a Saturday Market and a Sunday Market in addition to all of the various local markets.

I have no other way to describe these except as pure chaos – there are literally 1000s of vendors who stake out about 50 square feet (6-8 feet on each side) to display their wares for the passing mob of people.  For the Saturday and Sunday markets they close down the street the market is on to car traffic, while the Night Bazaar is lined up on the sides of the street but facing inwards across the sidewalks towards the store fronts.

The markets themselves go on for blocks and blocks – the Sunday Market boasts over 7 kilometers (about 3 miles) of shopping!!  To top it all off the place is totally packed with people, in some places the crowd is so thick that you move along at a pace that makes a turtle look like a sports car – and as I mentioned above this goes on for miles.

The females in my group seem to love this, but after about the first mile it is easy to draw some conclusions:

1. Tourists seem to buy the dumbest stuff – I understand the value of getting some souvenirs to remember your trip, or to give to friends back home, but much of this stuff to me looks like the leftovers from a bad re-gifting party.
2. There seems to be only about 10 manufacturers of market junk – with all the 100s of vendors at each of the markets there only seems to be about a dozen or so unique offerings, and all the rest are just competing with each other to offer the same thing, and it would appear that they all buy their inventory at the same central warehouse.
3. The market is no place for me 🙂 – after about an hour or so of plodding along with Mrs. Columbus and the girls and looking at the 97th booth of the same jewelry, I leave them to their shopping and return to the hotel.

I resolve to leave the shopping to the professionals, whom it seems to make some sort of sense to, and use those valuable hours to get some work done, and pamper my tired feet a little…

One of the many things that has jumped out at us here in Chiang Mai is the difference in prices between the north and the south where we came from.  All of Thailand has been hit by the same global slowdown that we hear so much about in the USA, but it is clear that some places here are more dependent on the world economy than others.

When we were in the south there were signs that things were a little slower than normal.  Even with this being the off season for tourist travel to Thailand, the beach resorts often mentioned to us that it was much slower than usual due to people’s fears about the Swine Flu and the economic slowdown.  This was most obvious to me when shopping for a massage as the price I was expecting to pay – about 300 Baht ($9 USD) – was reduced to about $200-$250 Baht ($6-$7 USD).  Imagine my surprise to get up north and find the cost of a massage to be in the $100-$120 Baht range!!! ($3-$4 USD) That is for a full hour of heavenly goodness!!!

We went to a shop the other night and lady who owned the shop was telling us that about 1/2 the shops that would normally be there have closed due to the slowdown in tourism.  The Rambutan, a popular fruit in SE Asia, normally sells for about $30B/kilogram, but the season is relatively short and because of the lack of people, the farmers are selling them for less than $10B/kilogram to try and get rid of them before they just become spoils.  I can’t even imagine the impact of having to lower my prices by 60% just to try and keep the lights on.

All these things are of course good for us, as the cost of accommodations, sightseeing, food, and local travel are all similarly reduced.  While I figured you could easily live quite well in Phuket for about $2500 USD / month (food, housing, etc.), I suspect you could do it here for around the $1500 USD/month mark – and that would be living the high life!  Anyway, it is great for us to see, and the locals are very happy to see us stop in their shops for goods or dinner.

We went looking at furniture today and saw some beautiful hand-carved goods.  Many of these pieces take several months for a carver to finish, and it is amazing to just watch them work.  We are still thinking about buying some items here and having them shipped to Seattle, and the trip today was very educational about what they can make here.  We clearly have some more thinking to do about what we are looking for.

It is off to Thai cooking school tomorrow – we are going to learn how to make some of the local dishes so that we can ‘attempt’ to reproduce some of them in our own kitchen in the future.