Bangkok’s Best Market : Talad Rot Fai

The Talad Rot Fai is awesome.

Dream with me for a moment … if you will readers … of a place that would make Brooklyn hang it’s sorry head in shame for being under stocked in faded, Western shirts and square, thick-framed glasses.

Picture a plot of land the size of several football fields, filled with hundreds of antique automobiles, from Fat Tire Harleys to rusting Studebakers to a ’57 Chevy convertible … spit-polished to a gleaming, Bordello-Bathroom red. Add thousands of vendors to those sweet rides, selling everything from worn-in converse sneakers to strings of sepia Edison bulbs, swinging lazily in the thick, darkening air.

Need a Vietnam War army backpack, craftily turned into MacBook sleeve? Oh yes you do. Did I mention the 1,000 food tents that serve the masses everything from coconut-shaved ice to thousand-year-old eggs on top of boiling noodle soup?

Translating to English as “train” or “railway” market, this place is mind-meltingly kick ass. You could pour five hours of your time down Rot Fai drain and never, ever miss it. Not even for a second.

The market is the brainchild of Pairod Roykaew – a Bangkok local obsessed with vintage collectables, particularly automobiles and motorcycles. Many years ago, he had a smaller, vintage-item-outpost at the Chatuchak Weekend market in the city. Land developers tore down his section to build … oh … I dunno … something half as cool and 58 times more lame.

So, in 2013, Roykaew found an abandoned, litter-strewn train yard and channeled his inner Kevin Costner like a Chuck-Norris-Boss. (To be clear: We are talking about Costner in Field of Dreams here, not Waterworld.) He built it. Everyone came.

Specifically, he built nine, expansive brick warehouses, which you enter through gorgeous, antique wooden doors. You can shop for vintage clothes, pose on the seat of a decaying Vespa, or even get a trim. Outside, the rows of vendors stretch endlessly.

If you want to come here from downtown Bangkok, you hop in a cab with your kindle, some headphones and/or other humans you genuinely enjoy speaking with. It’s 20 minutes outside of the city without traffic. If you’re going at peak hours on a Friday night – more like 45 to an hour.

Of course booze goes hand-in-hand with shopping for a slightly used monocle or a polka-dotted, hand-made Hello Kitty skirt. I’d estimate there are at least 20 bars in the market. Some are stools set around coolers of beer and ice, where locals throw down cards, screaming and yelling good naturedly when the game gets intense. The others are proper outfits … also where locals throw down beers and continue screaming and yelling for fun.

I want to jump up and down, screaming and yelling about how awesome the Rot Fai is to anyone who will listen.

The market is open Thursday – Sunday, from 5pm to 11pm every week. Don’t miss it the next time you’re blessed with a weekend in Bangkok.