Chatuchak Weekend Market

Chatuchak is not a market. It's a small city that happens to sell things. Spread across 35 acres with over 15,000 stalls, it's one of the largest outdoor markets in the world, and on a busy weekend it draws 200,000 visitors who collectively lose themselves in a labyrinth of narrow alleys that no map can accurately represent.

The market is divided into 27 sections, but these are more suggestions than rules. Section 2 is supposed to be pets, but you'll find vintage cameras there. The antique section bleeds into handmade furniture which somehow becomes a corridor of nothing but coconut ice cream vendors. Getting lost isn't just likely — it's the entire point. The veterans know to use the clock tower at the centre as a landmark and to pick up a paper map at the information booth, even though the map bears only a passing resemblance to reality.

The food is reason enough to come. Duck noodle soup for 50 baht. Coconut pancakes made on a griddle older than you. Mango sticky rice that tastes like the platonic ideal of the dish. The key is to arrive early — gates open at 9am on Saturday and Sunday — and to bring cash, because Wi-Fi is a rumour and most stalls don't take cards. By 2pm the heat is brutal and the crowds are five-deep. By 6pm it's over, the stalls folded up as if the whole thing was a shared hallucination.