A TOUR AT THE MARKET
- alessandrobordin5
- Oct 23, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 24, 2022
Among the places I have always been fascinated by are the markets: the continuous coming and going of people, the endless colours, the smells and scents, the sounds and the constant hubbub of voices, the everyday life of the vendors that finds its greatest expression in the expert gestures of their movements. Each element frames an indefinite agglomeration of human relationships that, on different levels and for different reasons, develop at the same time, in a single place.
Here in Thailand, there are many of them, and of different types: from daytime to night-time, from floating to land-based, from those where all kinds of food is sold, to those where clothes, household items, technological devices, etc. can be found. Generally, most of them are made up of complementary sections capable of satisfying customer demand with different product categories, while always leaving the right space for street food, the undisputed protagonist.
To understand the centrality that these places and these types of recipes hold in the daily life of Thais, however, one must dwell on the minimal unit that makes them up: the stall. Despite an ordinance in 2014 to phase out stalls and small shops on wheels in order to free up the capital's streets and give them a modern touch with the cry 'let's give the footpath back to the pedestrians', fortunately they are still to be found everywhere, in and outside the markets.
I say fortunately not by chance, because after some time spent here one cannot help but notice that the stall is a bit of a state of mind, a way of seeing and experiencing things. In fact, people frequent these places all the time and at all hours for two main reasons: firstly, the cost of eating out, in a market or a stall, is roughly equivalent to what one spends on shopping and eating at home; secondly, the time of day at which to eat is not always so strictly defined. It often happens that one eats smaller quantities of food at different times of the day, taking advantage of more or less substantial snacks present at every street corner.
In this regard, I think it is very interesting what a Thai woman married to a European told me: "I will never understand this way you Westerners have of asking 'how are you?' after saying hello, as if I had to tell you that I am sick, that I had this or that. In Thailand, after we say hello, we ask 'have you eaten yet?' ".
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