As Thailand has some other aspects than beach, food and temples we wanted to shed some lights on the lesser known attractions of Bangkok… Among them is the flower market which is quite conviently located adjuntctant to boat stop #6 and a short walking distance between peddlers, dogs, food stalls and everything in between…

On the market you are greeted with the display of people unloading a truck for of ice for the local sub-factory of an ice company. At 35° an impressive display and quite amazing

 

Inside the market halls you are greeted by the guard which (hopefully) keeps rodents at bay and a sharp lookout for any non-well-doers.

First impressions are heat, smell, clampiness and colours – actually a riot

People selling fresh (and not so fresh) veggies, flowers, kitchen utensils and everything else in that area

A yam – nourishing and quite heavily starched

keffir lime – needed for most soups

actually bags of it

as well as the perhaps most used spice in Thai kitchen

each sack must be around 25 Kg

sorting out the rotten ones. Actually in the heat they go overboard rather soon and have nice little maggots from the flies – well, maggots eating chilli? What kind of insect will be the result???

Banana leaf

nicely packed and mainly used for decoration (on the plate), or in more rural settings as the plate (not so easy as they are quite slippery…) or used to cook something inside

small shrines are everywhere

and in between the halls is the extension of the market for the newcomers or not so frequent sellers

Again everybody sells – from granny coming from the countryside to the professional hawker

Even during the dead of the midday heat everybody was busy

How did one fellow tourist mention to his (girl)friend: „baby chillies“ – oh boy, he will have a nice surprise…

Scotch bonnet (the smallest ones) are actually the nastiest

Have your share

Sugar cane – mainly used for cooking to compensate the chilli

and now to the offering section (flowers are very typical in temples)

pre-arranged, pre-made, ready to use

all for cermonical purpose

here as well

 

 

He is cutting betelnut to be chewed. Very nasty habbit as it actually makes your spit dark red, is highly carcinogenous and tastes rather brrrr… Yet there are more things you shouldn’t do but anyhow do… In India they are even consumed in combinated to licking a stick of quicklime (calcium carbonate) which nicely erodes away the teeth…

Offerings for the smaller budget

actually the bigger the cheaper was the impression

clover

and lillies in all kind of colours

very concentrated way of creating the bouqets

and finally, after a long period of hesitation I couldn’t resist, but had to buy a durian. Hard to describe how it tastes, Just imagine old cheese haveing a close relation with old socks. Depending on the ripeness the fruit can be anything from slightly off, overpowering to completely tearing away your olfactory organ.

Ours was on the juvenile side so luckily only the fridge in the hotel room started to smell rather bad, but the fruit as such was superb. I love it either in a pancake (small slices) or as a salad with crushed rock sugar, chillies and some coriander…