I recently had to cover this market for one of my freelance pieces. I heard of its reputation for quite a while already, about it being the new shopping spot in Bangkok and I was told by many of my friends, for a person who’s into vintage and old school stuff like me, I would really need to go there.

So I dragged my mom onto the MRT at 8pm one fine Saturday and headed to Ratchadapisek Station. The market is actually this vast dirt space between two stations so you can get off at Ladprao if that’s more convenient. A little walk on an infamously hazardous Bangkok sidewalk and then you’re there. At what seems like a huge parking lot of motorcycles it is actually the market.

When you think of a shopping market, an image of Chatuchak or Suan Lum probably comes to mind. You know clean concrete floors with designated booths for each vendors to set up their shop. At Ratchada Night, it looks more like a ngan wat, or a temporary market set up at temple fairs, with only tents and straw mat as their only tools of the trade. The goods are laid out on the floor here, so you will need to do some serious squatting before hitting the place to strengthen your leg muscles. Some vendors who are less lazy would bring their own racks and tables and actually make their shack a little more decent that others.

The vintage things that you see here aren’t just the goods. These guys are also retro at heart judging from their rides, from classic convertibles to hippie VW vans. And some of them creatively use these vehicles as their shop, laying out tshirts and antiques right on the hood.

I was in heaven. There are also some original and new stuff, like smuggled Onitsuka and B199 bags and shoes as sold everywhere else, but the highlights have to be the retro stuff. Vintage clothes, old books, old tin toys, old cameras, old furniture, old lamps, old radios, old every fucking thing you can imagine. Some people even kept newspapers with famous events on the first page and sell them in a nicely sealed folder. Other weird old things I found were cocoa/coffee cans, Cokes, cigarettes, gums, and other old consumer goods that probably have expired decades ago. I don’t know who would want to buy this though, except maybe for those with vintage-theme stores in town to authenticate their retro cred.

And yes I got myself another camera–1978 Kodak Ektra 100. Mom said she received something similar as a kid for her birthday and it was a new groundbreaking camera at the time.

Honestly, I am quite disappointed at the camera collection here. I expected a little more branded ones and all I saw were no-name point-and-shoots and several Chinese and Japanese knock-offs of famous German or Russian models. Well for B200-500 a camera you can’t really complain.

The market is super crowded with teenagers. When I say super crowded, think concert. The best time to go there is at 8pm when all the vendors come out but unfortunately, it’s also the time when all the shoppers come out. The market is also huge, with many rows to cover. It took us almost two hours to make the round. Good thing that it is a night market otherwise we would have died of heatstroke and suffocation.

I will definitely go there again as a shopper and not a writer so I don’t have to lug around a camera and jot down everything I see. Maybe when the weather cools down. Or maybe when the old camera itch comes back again.

Edit: Market opens every Fri-Sun night but busiest on Saturday night. Thanks keatix for spotting.