Mae Klong Market and Bangkok’s Unexpected Order
Living in the diplomatic heart of Dhaka—nestled between Baridhara, Gulshan 1, and Gulshan 2—you learn to appreciate the finer points of organized chaos. Twenty million people, constant honking that’s considered not just normal but polite communication, and traffic that defies all logic. So when we learned the expat community jokingly refers to Bangkok as “Gulshan 3,” we knew we had found our weekend escape route.
The locals (in Thailand) thought we were crazy, of course. “You’re coming to Thailand for a peaceful break?” they’d laugh. Living in a city where sitting for hours on a non-moving freeway is the norm despite packed public transportation crisscrossing the city, the idea that Bangkok represented tranquility was genuinely hilarious to them. But here’s the thing—sometimes perspective is everything.
I’ll admit, I had my expectations set pretty low for Thailand. Another developing Southeast Asian country, probably as chaotic as what we’d gotten used to in Dhaka, right? Wrong. From the moment we landed at Bangkok’s airport, I knew this wasn’t going to be the free-for-all I’d imagined. You had to pull a ticket to be assigned a taxi, and then drag your suitcases to your assigned taxi parking spot, and then pay a fixed rate with detailed explanations about bag and luggage surcharges. Instead of dodging “You need taxi?” offers as we exited Dhaka’s airport, here was order. After months of negotiating every ride, arguing over distances, and playing the “but I live here” card with rickshaw drivers, this simple system felt like stepping into the future.
The traffic was still heavy—this is Bangkok, after all—but there was something surprisingly organized about it. Cars stayed in lanes. People followed traffic signals. It was the kind of order that, coming from Gulshan 2, felt almost surreal.
The Mae Klong Market Ballet
Our first adventure took us to Mae Klong market, about an hour and a half outside Bangkok. Now, I thought I knew about markets functioning in impossible spaces—Dhaka’s street vendors can set up shop anywhere, squeeze a fruit stand into a gap between two parked cars, create commerce where logic says it shouldn’t exist. But Mae Klong market takes spatial impossibility to an art form.
Picture this: a fully functioning market spread across both sides of an active railway line. Not next to the tracks, not near the tracks—literally on the railway tracks. Vendors have their displays of fruits, vegetables, fish, and souvenirs arranged in perfect rows, some extending right to the edge of the rails.
Then the train comes.
What happens next is nothing short of choreography. Every shopkeeper knows exactly how far they need to pull back their goods, exactly which awnings need to fold, exactly how much space that particular train needs. There’s no panic, no rushed scrambling—just this fluid, practiced movement as the entire market transforms itself in minutes. Vendors casually fold umbrellas, slide tables back precisely the right distance, and step out of the way as if they’re performing a well-rehearsed dance.
The train rumbles through at what feels like impossibly close quarters, and within moments of its passing, everything slides back into place. The market resumes as if nothing happened. It was like watching a ballet performance, except instead of tutus and pointe shoes, it was mangoes and motor oil.
Serious Jokes and Serious Flavors
But our real discovery came through an Airbnb experience we almost didn’t book—a Thai cooking class at Siamese Cookery House. We’d done cooking classes before in other places, usually touristy affairs with predictable results. This one started the same way, with our hostess launching into what were clearly well-practiced jokes throughout the process. She met us at the subway and led us through a covered food market we’d never have found on our own – and provided a play-by-play of the items we were seeing on display. I never knew there were so many kinds of mangoes…or eggplants, ranging from a large pea in size to a small tomato, to eggplants that sort of justify the pop culture meaning of the emoji. And don’t even ask about “century eggs!”
But then something shifted. As we worked through each step—grinding curry paste, balancing sweet and sour and salty, learning the precise timing that makes Thai food sing—I realized we weren’t just going through the motions. Thai food is legitimately one of the tastiest cuisines in the world, and here we were, actually learning to make it properly.
By the end of the class, sitting down to eat what we’d created, I had that rare moment of looking at my plate and thinking, “I actually made this.” Not just assembled it or heated it up—but created something that tasted like it belonged in a real Thai restaurant. It was the kind of satisfaction that makes you want to call everyone you know and brag a little.
We ended up going back two more times on subsequent trips to Bangkok. The jokes stayed the same, but the skills improved, and each time that moment of “I made this” felt just as rewarding.
The Gulshan 3 Effect
As we headed back to Dhaka after that first weekend, I understood why the locals had laughed at our idea of Bangkok as a peaceful retreat. It’s not that Bangkok is quiet—it’s a massive, bustling city with all the energy that entails. But coming from Gulshan 2, where the baseline for sensory input is cranked up to eleven, Bangkok’s organized chaos felt like a meditation retreat.
Maybe it’s all about perspective. Maybe what counts as overwhelming depends entirely on what you’re comparing it to. Or maybe we’d just found our perfect weekend escape—a place where trains run through markets like clockwork, taxi rates are posted on signs, and you can learn to make green curry that actually tastes like green curry.
Either way, we’d be back to Gulshan 3 soon enough.
