Monday morning follows Sunday night and that can only mean
one thing. Yep I am now a veteran of the famous Chiang Mai Sunday Market.
Wow what a zoo.
The Sunday market is just one of
many markets in Chiang Mai and is considered to be the largest. Being staged inside
the old city I was told that it was just a short walk from my place. So at about
seven last night I headed out. Walking through the back alleyways I slowly made my way towards
the market. At first I wasn’t sure if I was headed in the right direction but
after about ten minutes or so I noticed all these scooters parked on the side
of the road. There had to be a couple
hundred of them at this one intersection. All of them parked beside and around
one another. Now the size of this market is a bit hard to estimate but I
would hazard a guess at ten city blocks square. The streets are closed to
vehicular traffic for the day and night as the vendors set up their stalls on the
sidewalks and down the center of the road to hawk their wares. Now where they get all their wares from I have
no idea but my goodness there is everything you can imagine here.
Mixed in with all the vendors are
the musicians, magicians, masseuses and a multitude of actors all vying for
your attention, well actually your cash. Now I know that this all sounds like a spectacular spectacle and it is. Only, now I hesitate to use the word problem but the
only problem is that the Sunday
Market isn’t a very well-kept secret. Seems like the web site that directed me to
the market was also visited by some 100 000 other people. To be honest not all of those people showed
up at the market last night. But what those seven other people were up to last night
I'll never know.
Chaos can be found all around
us. Chaos and conflict are a part life.
That is a fact that cannot be changed.
However how we deal with it can be changed or rather directed. The Sunday market can be viewed as complete
and utter chaos. The throngs of people
in constant motion, the glaring lights, the smells from all the food vendors and
the noise. Oh so much noise. There were
the singers, most of them blind, sitting in the middle of the street, with their
microphone and a small speaker. Singing songs I couldn’t understand while on
lookers dropped coins into their small tin box. Then there were small groups of people playing
instruments I’ve never seen nor heard before, instruments that emitted strange
almost annoying sounds. Then there were the large groups of students waving
placards while shouting out looking for donations for what I have no idea. All
this was coming together at once. Insanity being multiplied by chaos inside my head. Then I remembered to take a deep breath and relax and as if by magic it all seemed to slow down. It
all started to make sense. The singer’s song, though still not understood, was
soft, siren and made me pause to listen. The groups with the annoying
instruments now had tempo and rhythm and the music moved me. The groups of
students still made no sense but that was OK too because they, for some unknown
reason, belonged here. They were integral to the big picture and they made me
smile.
I think if one were to view the market from
afar that they would see 99 994 people, plus all the vendors
musicians magicians and actors, moving as one. Flawless, graceful, moving
together with purpose and harmony. BUT when you are like I was last night, a
market neophyte dropped into the middle of it all, let me just say that took a
while for me to see it for what it is. And once I did I found myself no longer
walking against the flow but with it. I saw not a bunch of individuals pushing,
shoving, shouting and trying to part me from my money. But instead I saw a
community. This is a community of
sellers and buyers, of hawkers and gawkers, each needing the other. Each richer
from being involved in the amazement called the Chiang Mai Sunday Market.
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