Rabbits, and Geese, and Squirrels, OH MY!

Bangkok is literally full of markets and malls. It seems like anywhere you look you can find a group of stores or stalls selling anything from furniture to a family pet...the term pet is used loosely. We had the opportunity to visit one of Bangkok's biggest (if not the biggest) marketplaces. When we first started walking it seemed like we were in the middle of a really nice furniture store, like an upscale IKEA, only it was in an open air warehouse. Once we passed through the huge warehouse we hit the beginning of the stalls. The market is sectioned off into basic areas: furniture, household goods, fashion, fish, pets, and another section of really random stuff. The furniture and household goods sections were cool but since we are homeless at the current time they were pretty useless. The fish section was amazing. There were stalls that resembled the fish section of any pet store back in the states and then there were stalls that held some of the strangest/biggest fish I have ever seen outside of an actual city aquarium. My dad would have been in heaven. We saw everything from fish that are found in the Amazon, turtles, huge koi, and even black tip sharks...that's right, you can walk right up and buy your own black tip shark. They were not full grown black tips but they were at least the length of my arm. The craziest section had to have been the pets section. I'm not even sure how to describe it...it is one of those "you have to see it to believe it" things. I guess you would have to envision a place like Bussy's Flea Market in San Antonio. Imagine one isle, but instead of stalls filled with random items imagine if they all sold stacks upon stacks of cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, squirrels (yes, Bekah-actual squirrels), sugar gliders, hedgehogs, turtles, snakes, lizards, and probably anything else you can think of. When we say birds we don't just mean your run of the mill parakeets....we mean parakeets, parrots, pigeons, doves, peacocks, swans, chickens, and several others that we had never seen before. We decided why it would be easy to point Thailand's markets as the origin of the Bird Flu because among all of the thousands of bird cages were stands selling all kinds of food that was just sitting out in the open. Our favorite section was the fashion section. After walking down one aisle of stores we decided that we should have come to Thailand with the clothes on our backs and purchased everything else here. You can get really nice clothes, purses, and jewelery for under 7 US Dollars. We found ourselves drooling over several stores but had to keep reminding ourselves that we would have to carry whatever we bought for the next 6 months. If you are ever in Thailand we definitely suggest that you visit one of the huge outdoor markets, it is definitely an eye opening experience. Oh, and on a side note: did you know that in Thailand you do not have to refrigerate eggs, they can just sit on a cart outside (in the shade) all day waiting for you to buy them!


P.S. Cock fights are legal and can be found in the middle of most markets. Just look for a group of grown men screaming at what looks like a blow up kiddie pool from a distance.