Bangkok's Trok Mor Morning Market
One of my favorite things to do when I travel is visit local food markets and supermarkets. Naturally, then, when I was in Southeast Asia last year, I made it a point to go to as many markets as I could. While Phong Dien was my favorite floating market, my favorite market, period, was Trok Mor morning market in Bangkok’s old town, known as Rattanakosin.
Of all the markets I visited, this one was the least touristy and most full of locals, which no doubt contributed to how I feel about it. I saw perhaps a couple of other tourists each time I visited. It IS a morning market, and most tourists don’t want to be up at 5 or 6am. When I went though, which was every day I was in Bangkok the first time, I was there around 6 or 7am, the silver lining of jet lag and staying just around the corner. I wanted to walk around and experience the market, soak up the atmosphere, and I couldn’t get enough. I also wanted to breakfast on pad krapao.
But most of all, the energy so early in the morning just gave me life. I am an introvert, but I thrive alone in a crowd when I’m engrossed in something that excites me. And if food is involved, even better. The aromas, the visuals, the auditory stimuli were, to a first-time visitor to the region, like jumping off the diving board the first time you see a pool. There was no tip toeing, no baby steps, no testing the waters. It was all in, all at once. Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t in New York anymore.
Maybe I wasn’t even in Bangkok, at least not in the Bangkok I experienced elsewhere. Just a few blocks away is the famous backpacker heaven – or hell, depending on your inclination – Khaosan Road, full of bars advertising in English, touts hounding passersby, overpriced pad thai, westernized foods, and so many rowdy tourists that it feels like a theme park of every Thai stereotype. The night markets in Bangkok, with more tourist-friendly hours, often felt like a circus show too, swapping the loud bars for stalls selling fried worms and scorpions on a stick.
Trok Mor, on the other hand, seems stuck in time by comparison, in a way that still serves its local population, who are the lifeblood of the market. This is what I imagine food shopping was like before there was a 7Eleven on every corner. What street markets were like before mass tourism, before they began to cater to westerners looking for the Bizarre Foods experience. The narrow alleys, flanked by merchant stalls and stands, multistory buildings, and with the odd moped crawling through every now and then, despite feeling thoroughly Thai, are oddly reminiscent of the souks and medinas in places like Cairo and Tunis, at least of nearly two decades ago. The food is different, the people are different, the chaos is different, but the hum of humanity going about its business the way it has done for generations seems to transcend geography and cultures. Maybe it’s the density of the buildings, or of the people. Maybe it’s the almost melodic cacophony of shouts, knives hitting wood blocks, boiling oil, liquid sloshing around, and flip flops dragging on the pavement.
The main strip, which runs on Soi Thesa between Ratchabophit Road and Bamrung Mueang Road, is jammed with shoppers early in the morning. People buying groceries for the day, children buying food on the way to school, people getting their morning drinks in knotted up plastic bags, people offering monks food, me searching for every kind of banana I could find. Walking here is a contact sport at times. But step away into Soi Sukha, the narrow street that intersects Soi Thesa and divides the market in half, and you’ll be met with relative peace and tranquility where you can eat your market spoils before going back for more. You’ll have to stand though, there are no tables here.
I recently finished Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, by Fuchsia Dunlop. It was such a wonderful read. Dunlop is deeply knowledgeable about the subject and also an evocative writer. I highly recommend this book.
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