6/8/08 Chatuchak Market

Yesterday we went to the Chatuchak Market which is a huge market that’s only open on the weekends. It was so overwhelming that we had to leave after a couple hours, but I went back this morning and got some serious shopping done! Some of the shops are in a covered building and some are on the edges open to the outside. This market is crazy huge and has everything you can possibly imagine. If it exists, it’s here! There’s lots of food vendors too and I decided to try these flavored little waffles they have. Soooooo good!!!! They’re all warm and yummy. The chocolate one is the best! There’s also lots of orange juice vendors. I don’t know if I mentioned this before but Thailand has the best orange juice! There’s a pic of a glass I had yesterday, but I mostly took it because it looked pretty but it was not the best juice. Typically it is a deep orange color and really sweet and delicious! One of the sadder things at the market is the animals for sale… rabbits, birds, kittens, and puppies. They are super cute of course but you can tell they’re really really hot and who knows where they come from. I took a nap after I came home today and had a dream that I put 4 of them in my bag because I felt the need to rescue them but them I had no idea what to do with them after that….glad to wake up and find that didn’t happen! So one of our assignments it to make friends with a Thai person and then be able to use that person as an informant to help us understand the culture and other things we see and don’t understand. My plan of attack was to go into a hair salon and strike up a conversation with someone there; after all we do have something in common. I thought this would be relatively easy… wrong! I went into one of the salons on our street called Zone yesterday evening to get a shampoo and blow dry. My hair has looked horrible since I got here so I figured I could kill 2 birds with one stone…of course it’s so hot and humid that it began to frizz a little within minutes and I surrendered to the ponytail not too long after! They were nice and did a good job, but turns out the girl doing my hair didn’t speak any English. So I made a second attempt with the girl at the little salon that’s in out building, but after a few works of greeting and getting across so her that I’m also a hairdresser, we were pretty much at an impasse. Guess I’ll have to keep trying! I think that’s about all for now!