2 dresses, 1 mounted scorpion, 3 fresh orange juices, 12 coconut balls, 1 hipster satchel, and 1 carved elephant later

Sunday night market in Chiang Mai: holy smokes! I almost didn't go, since I had gone to the daily Night Bazaar earlier in the week which is what my dad would call a TTT. It was all farang tourists and crazy overpiced goods (by Thai standards, anyhow) and the same 10-12 items in most booths. But my amazing guesthouse co-owner Moe told me I could not under any circumstances skip the Sunday night market, and freshly armed with my Western Union baht I went on down.

Well at this point I have been to some crazy world markets - the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Otavalo craft market in Ecuador, and the Tokyo fish market - and, okay, the Tokyo fish market will probably always rank as the craziest but this takes a close second. Seemingly all of northern Thailand descends on miles of closed-off streets in Chiang Mai and there is endless live music, cooking, fireworks, concerts, and best of all, unbelievably varied goods all for like $1-5.

I was glad to be alone here as I shopped for likely much longer than any other human could've put up with, and entered a perhaps ill-advised shopping hysteria since my bag size has already doubled and it's only day four. The breaking point came around 10 or 11 PM when I was negotiating for a gigantic 3 foot handcarved wooden spoon which I was going to get for the A frame sauna. I had him down to 50 cents before realizing I would be carrying a gigantic wooden spoon for the next two weeks, and decided it was time to get myself out of the market ASAP.

Here is like, 1/1000th of the market: