The Terrific3 travel blog

We went to the infamous Sunday night market yesterday. It was very much catered to tourists, with lots of souvenirs, tourist friendly food, and inflated prices. We got there right as it opened at 5pm as we had heard it gets crowded (and it did). The boys had “earned” money for hours of sleeping on the plane and various other things so I gave them each a Fanny pack with Thai baht and taught them the fine art of bargaining—of acting interested but not too interested, inquiring about prices, low balling a bit, acting ambivalent, and letting the vendor play with you a bit on the pricing. I really enjoy markets in developing countries for this reason—bargaining is so fun for me, and I think for them too; and I’m pretty good at it. In the past, I’ve been known to be a super tough bargainer. Now, I don’t low ball as much because I’m not a poor medical student anymore, and I really want these vendors to get their money, but I still think it’s fun and an important skill for my kids to learn,

The kids got some snow cones and they were unreal—your usual snow cone on steroids—with condensed sweetened coconut milk all over them. Yum!

We walked around, the kids got souvenirs, I got souvenirs, and we found the food court, tried some new foods and then tried to get a taxi home.

That was an ordeal as the market road is closed and we apparently were on the wrong side of the road and no taxis could get to us. We went back through the crowded market, and found one of the red songtaews. I was nervous about us riding 30 minutes home in those without seatbelts but we really had no better options so made the best of it. Sometimes you just have to roll with it, ya know! The kids really enjoyed the market vibe.