Two Beers and a Pretzel

Chatuchak Market is the largest market in Thailand, and arguably, one of the largest in the world.  At roughly 1/2 a square mile with over 5000 shops, it’s so big and popular that many city maps have a special section just for this market. There are entire sections of clothing, home decor, Buddhist trinkets, plants, pets, crafts, etc…

The main streets through the market are wide.

Some shops had some pretty funny merchandise:

I started by making a b-line for the tropical fish and pet area.  I imagine about 8 acres of aquarium shops.

For all my aquarium hobby friends, you think you’d be in fish-heaven, but it’s not exactly as good as you imagine.  There are hundreds of stores of varying quality.  Some of the best ones are the planted tank specialists, reef shops, guppy stores, fancy goldfish shops, and the arrowana only stores.  There were very few cichlids and catfish.  You had everything from nice display shops to people selling hundreds of pre-bagged fish.

The most popular and expensive fish were Red Arrowanna from breeding farms in Singapore, and Flowerhorns (which were happily advertized as hybrid, crossed, or manmade – it was a selling point)

Substrate and rocks were about 20 Bhat per kilogram (25 cents a pound)

The reef shops were the same quality as the top end shops back home – with only the expensive equipment.  Not really any cheaper either..

Sadly, there were an abundance of fish that cannot survive in captivity, and many of the fish-only saltwater stores had obviously sick or caught with cyanide looking animals.  Here was a full tank of obviously starving Moorish Idols…

On the way out, I ran across a place selling chickens.  To draw a crowd, they had a ring setup for cock-fighting.

After that, I had had enough of the sights and smells of the market and headed back to the guesthouse to rest up for my apperance at the Indian Consulate to get my visa.