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…