Chatuchak Market and Victory Monument

Bangkok, Day 11.

Today, we headed off to explore both the Chatuchak Weekend Market and the Victory Monument areas of Bangkok.

Chatuchak Market

To get to the Chutuchak Market, we took the BTS from Thong Lo to Mo Chit (on the Green Sukhumvit line).

Chatuchak Market is the biggest weekend market in the World. 200,000 people visit the market over the weekend. The market is fully open from 9am-6pm over the two days and there are over 15,000 stalls to search through.

The market also sits right beside a huge park area, which appears to comprise of 3 separate park areas. If it wasn't so hot and we were not so exhausted from waking around the market, we may have liked to wander around the park as it looks beautiful but we had already planned to stop off at Victory monument on our way back home, so the park would have been too much.

We arrived about 10am to the market and the BTS was packed with people heading to the market also. There were lots of stalls all opened at that time, but there were also others just opening up. The market does have a sort of street plan but we just got lost and wandered around as we wanted.

30 Nov 2024

I'm sure we missed lots out but we got a good sense and feel for the market I think. There were some really unusual and unique stalls as well as a lot of stalls selling similar goods. There was also lots of food vendors and a great food court area. There are stalls on both the outside areas as well as ones inside. In some cases, areas can be very busy and when we noticed this, we would often just go down a different alleyway.

Of course, the problem when you are travelling light is that you can't really buy much, even if you see things you like, because you don't have the space. I'll try to cover our 'one bag' approach in a future post. However, we did pick up a couple of 'little' items for 'the children'.

The food options were very good. We opted for lunch in a great little restaurant in the middle of the market called 'Pen Age Boat Noodles' and it was fantastic. I had fried chicken and R had fried chicken with rice but the prices were amazing. A bottle of coke was 15 Baht (£0.34), and our total lunch bill came to 175 Baht (£4.02)!

Victory Monument

After we had seen enough of the market, we jumped back onto the BTS and went from Mo Chit to the Victory Monument BTS station.

The Victory Monument is one of the most-seen monuments in Bangkok as it sits at one of Bangkok's busiest intersections where Ratchavithi, Phyathai and Phahonyothin meet. The monument was erected in 1941 as a tribute to 160 soldiers, policemen and civilians who fought for the kingdom during the border conflict in Indochina between Thailand and France. The BTS Victory Monument station is one of the busiest train stations in the city, as the area is also a transportation hub.

The Shopping Malls

There were two smaller and older shopping centres near the Victory Monument that we popped into. These both looked like they had been built in the 1970s, and they were a little small and tired compared to the much newer and grander ones all around Bangkok. We did note that there were lots and lots of places to get nails, hair and beauty treatments done, and there were lots of women and girls using the place for these treatments, so perhaps they are very well priced for these types of things, but it's not something I'm really into :)

On the other hand, we were needing a little break at this point, so we did find the perfect place to have some iced drinks and snow desserts. I had a watermelon dessert and R had a chocolate one. We got the regular size and it was huge, R couldn't finish his - I of course managed, but it was a great pit stop and just what we needed to refresh our hot and tired feet and bodies.

The Park Area

After our little break, we headed out of the shopping centre and back into the open heat for a little wander around the local streets, and we came to a pretty little park area. I have no idea what it is called and cannot seem to find it on Google maps, but it was very nice - several older lady attendants were working in it, cleaning, sweeping, planting, watering, etc, and a few folks were using the park. We also spotted our first monitor lizard here, and he was quite a big guy!

After the park, we made our way back to the Victory Monument BTS and went back to the Thong Lo BTS for home. All in all it was yet another interesting and fun day where we saw lots of things, experienced some new things and exceeded our daily step targets again. At least once we got back home we could chill, relax and just enjoy the evening sunset from the balcony apartment.

Bangkok, Thailand