The next day we decided to do a full-day tour to see some of the sights in and around Bangkok. It was an unfortunately rainy day but I just packed my raincoat and umbrella and decided to make the best of it. I fell asleep on the drive outside the city, so you’ll have to refer to my mom’s emails if you want to learn what the tour guide told us on our hour-long drive. I was awoken when we arrived at a medium-sized city and told we were going to see the Train Market, which turned out to be one of the strangest/coolest things I have seen during my year abroad. For about 100 years the people of this town have been having a daily market where they sell fresh produce and food products along the same road. Sometime ago (don’t know the exact year because I was sleeping…oops) the government came and said they needed to build a train route along the road with the market and that the people were going to have to move their market to a different location. The people said, you can build your train but we’re not moving our market, and they didn’t! We walked along the market for awhile, and you could see that we were walking over tracks, but we had no idea how a train could come through. The road was extremely narrow, with stalls on either side of the tracks, and barely two people could walk side by side, and the market was packed. As we walked along, our tour guide told us to pay attention that everything was set out on rolling tables and that things that were not on rolling tables were low to the ground. We walked a little more, the tour guide looked at her watch, and told us the train would be coming soon and to get out of the way. We tucked ourselves into the back of a stall (“Just make sure you’re as far back as the vendors and you won’t get hit” is what she said) and watched in awe as the vendors scooted their tables back, made sure everything was low enough that it could fit under the sides of the train, and pulled back their tarps. All of a sudden, a full-sized train came rushing through the market! It was so close we could have touched it and if we would have tripped we would have fallen directly into the path of the train. As soon as it passed, everything was put back into its original place and within seconds the market looked exactly as it did before the train had passed. You can watch the video I took to get a visual of what I’m talking about.
After the train passed, our guide led us to a stall where she purchased two fish live fish that she put into a Tupperware container. I thought it was a little weird that she was buying dinner for herself during a tour, and also thought that it would probably stink up our van, but figured she knew what she was doing. After we exited the market, she took us to a river where she proceeded to release the fish! She told us that as a Buddhist, everything she does to help living things in this life will allow her to have a better life when she is reincarnated. She said she can’t buy all the fish in the market and release them, but she can buy two every time she comes. The theme of the day was how treating people well in this life will allow you to have a better life the next time around.
Picture: Our guide buying fish from the market; The train market
Video: The train coming through the market
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