Night Bazaars

For serial shoppers, Bangkok becomes a gigantic bazaar after dark. If you map out your itinerary for the evening, you can easily include stopovers at tradition-tinged markets blooming with local colour, the mega-popular street stalls and shops around Silom and Sukhumvit Roads, and the glitzy night bazaar at Suan Lum, while still having time for a few pit stops to fuel up on fine food, drink and entertainment. Whatever your preference for consumer goods, from handsome handicrafts to homespun silk, designer clothes to DVDS and affordable beachwear, they’re easy to find. So you can shop until your bank balance drops.
    
Start off the evening at the Saphan Put Night Market in Chinatown. It’s under the bridge of the same name. These two long winding roads are chock-a-block with street stalls and teeming with Thai teenagers and young foreign travelers. T-shirts begin at just Bt50 and for only Bt100 you can step out in a new pair of shoes. It’s also a cool place to pick up some trendy hip-hop clothes, get a tattoo, or sit and have your portrait painted by street artists to the tune of Western dance music and Thai pop. The market also boasts an array of women’s fashion accessories, cosmetics and perfume.     
    
Only a short stroll away is the city’s most famous flower market. Pak Khlong comes in a painter’s palette of colour – orchids of every hue, garlands of marigold, birds of paradise, and bouquets of roses from Chiang Mai. Many flower shops have bloomed along the street where visitors can pick up special floral arrangements and the florid, ceremonial ornaments known as bai sri, built out of banana leaves and crowned with flowers. This area is also a welcome breath of fresh air from the smoggy and muggy capital’s usual miasma.          
    
Hail a taxi or tuk tuk for the 20-minute ride to the Klong Tom Market. Keep your eyes peeled for the pink neon sign above the Klong Tom Center. It’s the nucleus of this area. And at night it’s swarming with bargain-hunters. The main indoor market is a sprawling labyrinth of stalls selling everything from children’s toys, like radio-controlled cars and robots, and Hello Kitty dolls, to the latest mobile phone accessories and computer software. Towards the back of the centre is the place to get plugged in to the latest electronic goods and fads. 
     
Outside the marketplace, and alongside the canal that borders it, visitors can get some real insights into how the hoi polloi of Thai society live, eat and shop. In some of these tiny kiosks – or laid out on blankets on the street – you will see Buddhist amulets, rice-farming tools and second-hand clothes.
       
After navigating the swarming streets of Chinatown and walking the narrow gauntlet of shops and stalls, it should be time for a well-deserved break at the Suan Lum Night Bazaar. It’s near Lumphini Park. The bazaar’s stomach and liver is its perennially popular beer garden. Here, you can gorge yourself on some Thai specialties like sweet-and-sour seafood, or papaya salad and grilled chicken. For Western fare, there are pizza slices and imported beer. On-stage, seven nights a week, is a variety show of live music and dance, featuring pop, rock and R&B hits from Thailand and abroad. Children should enjoy the shows of traditional Thai puppetry, beginning at 7:30pm nightly, in the Joe Louis Puppet Theatre, or they can take a whirl on the huge Ferris wheel and see the big picture of neon-splashed Bangkok at night.    
       
Watch out for the signs that show detailed maps of the big bazaar. It’s divided into different sections, many of which are named after the country’s former Royal capitals, such as Sukhothai, for clothing and accessories, Ayuthaya, for arts and handicrafts, and Rattanakosin, for gifts and souvenirs. 
       
Other sections of this flashy, upscale marketplace include cultural delicacies like ceramics; one of the country’s best-known exports and national treasures is benjarong (literally, “five colours”), which is short-hand for glazed ceramics with bedazzling colour schemes. Suan Lum is also noteworthy for its wealth of OTOP products. These locally crafted sculptures, handicrafts, curios and foodstuffs include organic tea and painted wooden umbrellas from Chiang Mai. What’s more, by purchasing some of these items, shoppers-cum-philanthropists are making a contribution to the livelihood of poor villagers and helping to keep alive a number of dying arts and crafts.  
       
For exotica from other parts of Asia head for the Chinese Goods Plaza.        
       
Female shoppers will also fall purse-over-heels in love with the bazaar and its choice collection of 100 percent Thai silk purses, designer dresses and sexy swimsuits. 
       
Overall, Suan Lum is little bit like the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which offers many of the same products, except it is cleaner, classier, less congested and has wider lanes. Plus, the refreshing night breeze keeps consumers from feeling too overheated and drained. 
       
At any of these venues the same rule of cheerful haggling applies. Some vendors will quote an initial price so high up in the stratosphere it could be orbiting the earth. So you can bank on starting off with an opening bid of about one-third of the figure they’ve punched into their pocket calculators and then working your way up from there until you meet in the middle. Buying several items from the same vendor should also get you a discount. With clothes and shoes, do inspect the workmanship. There are some shoddy knock-offs masquerading as the real McCoy.    
       
Now it’s time to make a decision. To head for the bustling Patpong Night Bazaar and the street stalls crowding the west side of Silom Road, or make tracks for the maze of roadside kiosks lined up along Sukhumvit Road, from Soi Nana and up. Frankly, the two areas do not differ all that much. Both of them offer well-worn brand names like Levis, Nike and Polo. Both have some excellent tailors. And both shopping districts have their fair share of English pubs, Thai restaurants, wine bars and risqué entertainment.
        
In what is surely one of the great ironies of globalization, you can purchase Chinese-style woodcarvings of dragons, right next to vendors hawking designer sunglasses, DVDs, luggage and football jerseys for English teams in both ends of town and places like the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar.   
       
Getting caught up in a whirlwind shopping spree like this one affords visitors the chance to do a mini-tour of the country’s exquisite artistry and finery, high-tech electronics and lowbrow kitsch, as well as examine its fascinating blend of Western, Indian and Chinese influences. To undertake such a tour doesn’t mean you have to break your budget, but you may have to injure it a little.