Market Makeover

I have fond memories of Dalat Aw Taw Kaw, a vast fresh and prepared foods market across the street from Bangkok's more famous Chatuchak (aka the 'Weekend Market') boasting a selection of edibles that never failed to get my saliva glands working. My Thai teacher introduced me to Aw Taw Kaw in 2002 and almost every visit Dave and I have made to Bangkok since we left a year later has included a morning spent grazing its front aisle.

But it's been a couple of years, and I had no idea that Aw Taw Kaw had undergone a serious, floor-to-ceiling renovation. While I was in the US Dave found himself in Bangkok on a Saturday morning and, per our routine, made straight for the market. 'It reminds me of a Tesco,' he told me over the phone. Aw Taw Kaw used to be known by Bangkok residents as the 'movie star market' because of its cleanliness relative to other Bangkok markets and its high prices.

Goodness, I wonder what they call it now.

I really don't know what to make of the renovations. From Dave's photos it appears that Aw Taw Kaw still boasts a selection of foods from around the country, that its seafood vendors still offer what is probably the most pristine fish and shellfish in Bangkok,

and that it's still a fine place for visitors to the city (especially first-time visitors, who might be shy of diving into the Thai capital's rather less-regulated street food scene) to do a bit of snacking.

But I can't help but feel a bit sad for what's been lost. Next to Aw Taw Kaw was a small wooden open-air building where an older vendor dished up a sublime version of generally overlooked dish, guayteow nam (rice noodles in soup). He and his soup are gone, but at least now, in the same building, you can eat LA-style pork buns (?) in air-conditioned comfort.

The market is still populated by (some) family-run businesses, like this pork stall, but Dave reports that many of our old favorites are no more. I fondly remember a bespectacled vendor named Jum who specialized in all things crab. Her kanom jeen nam yaa bpuu, rice vermicelli doused with an over-the-top coconut milk crab curry, was simply amazing. Across the aisle her mother and a cousin sold delicious porky Chinese dumplings, and down the way her sister specialized in giant prawns, boiled and grilled. The grilled prawns were disappointingly dry but oh, those boiled crustaceans, touched with a bit of the classic lime-fish sauce-chili dip. The grilled Thai sausage man (round ones, short ones, long ones, sour ones and spicy ones) - gone. The extremely sweet, extravagantly coiffed and made-up matron, relatively new to the market, who made kanom namtaan, an otherwise difficult-to-find spongy steamed cake topped with fresh coconut shreds - gone. The vendor who ran a mini kanom workshop that turned out beautiful purple and pink jellied rosettes and tiny marzipan-like 'fruits' - gone.

I'm not against improved standards of hygiene and sanitation, but I wish that when planners plotted their urban market renovations they'd take the human side into account. Renovations require closing down all or parts of a market or relocating the vendors while work is done. In the case of Bangkok's Nang Leong Market many vendors in the central section (Nang Leong market consists of stalls in a center 'square' surrounded on all four sides by more stalls in and in front of permanent shophouses) never returned after the renovations were over; they either took their business elsewhere or retired. Nang Leong is still a great place to eat, but the renovations really took the wind out of the place, and quite a lot of what was special about the market - especially inside the square - no longer exists.

I don't know how the renovations to Aw Taw Kaw proceeded, so I can't say whether our favorite 'missing vendors' are no longer there because they couldn't afford to be sidelined while the work was being done. I do know that it's rare for vendors to be offered compensation to make up for business lost in cases like this. (I also don't know if rents were raised after renovations or not.)

And I suppose one could say, 'What does it matter if a vendor hangs around post-renovations or not, because there will always be another to take his or her place?' I suspect that's how many a planner might see it, anyway.

I'm reminded of a writer I met when I was in New York. Over breakfast in a sleek Italian cafe in Soho, he described watching the neighborhood that he's called home for many years change from one filled with small, family-owned, characterful businesses and eateries to a place of chain stores, hip restaurants, and loft conversions. Yet there's no denying that the area is much safer - and cleaner - than it was when I worked in New York in the late eighties. When it comes to modernizing, cleaning up, renovating ... whatever one wants to call it .... balance seems elusive.

I do suspect Aw Taw Kaw is the future of urban markets in Southeast Asia.  And I wonder if, when the conversion is complete, they'll capture my imagination as they do now.

Comments

[saupin]

Hi..
i am one of your blog's fan!
we have the same habit which is like to visit the market!
you have been in Kelantan Pasar Siti Khatijah before?
This is one of the famous market throughout the Malaysia where you can take some great scene of photo as the design of the market made the sun light beautify it.
See ya and continue the effort on posting some great entries!

[Robyn]

Saupin - thanks for your comment. Is that Kelantan market the one in Kota Baru with the hexagonal central hall? We posted on that a couple years ago -- you'll find it if you do a Kota Baru search on our search bar. I agree, it's a spectacular market, definately high up on my list of favorites. :-)

[mary shaposhnik]

Now I feel remiss for not having commented when I saw these renovations last year, though I had only had one pre-renovation visit with which to compare. I still ate incredibly well there, but that explains why I could not find your khanom jeen lady -- I thought I was just turned around or had too dim a memory of her.

The argument for renovation for modernity's sake is a lot less compelling at Aw Taw Kaw than at many markets--it was quite fine "before." While I could not agree more that it is not just nostalgia talking to say something is lost in many of these changes, this gets us to the question of who the decision-makers actually are, and whether there is enough of a community to influence them. Or is the answer in finding innovative ways to change but retain -- or regain -- community? Can new vendors be part of creating a new and better community? Maybe so, but it's hard to keep from wondering where the others went. Or is it an architectural issue, about how design influences interaction?

[Joanne]

Hi.I feel the same way, most of these renovations and modernisations rob the places of their very character and life. Now everything is ultra modern, too clean, too sterile, too unreal. I want to go where life is, where characters and things leap up to say hi, where everything is unique. I hope Malaysia will not be that way, because I love it as it is.

[Robyn]

Mary - that's sort of how I feel. Aw Taw Kaw was already quite 'clean' and hardly a truly wet 'wet market' before ... I know street food-phobes who happily ate there. I suspect that with many of this sort of market renovation project the people making the decisions are not fans of traditional markets - most probably never shop in them. So it becomes a matter of fixing what's 'wrong' with market (everything) and making it 'better' through wholesale 'modernization'. There's also, often, a sort of simplistic view of what is modern (Tesco, not a wet market) and a belief that traditional wet markets project poorly on a country that's trying to show a twenty-first century image to the world.
Heck, you could write a Ph.D. on that alone.

My feeling after visiting a lot of markets is that design definately does influence interaction. For instance, narrow aisles might make for a bit of discomfort when shoppers are trying to squeeze by each other, but vendors interact more, it seems. Or perhaps I'm imagining it. I haven't been to the new Aw Taw Kaw, of course, but it's hard to imagine the sort of jokey back-and-forth that characterized the front prepared foods aisle of the old market taking place in this cavernous space.

Hi Joanne - thanks for your comment. A great line - 'I want to go where life is.' I agree completely. The day they turn Pudu market or Chow Kit Market into something like this will be a sad one indeed.

[Lizzie]

It's such a shame when things like this happen - so much character is lost. A little bit of dirt never harmed anyone; I spent a lot of my childhood going shopping with my grandma in dirty stinky markets full of live poultry and fish stalls. All the better for it!

[saupin]

ya..it's in Kota Bharu..
u did visit it?
thx for posting it also!
i do like my hometown a lot and i am proud to be Kelantanese also!
currently studying in MMU Melaka.
Looking forward for your next market posts!

[Xander]

I'm always grateful to you for introducing me to things I don't know in my own city. I'll have to go check that out for myself. -X

[Robyn]

Lizzie - I would agree, but there are many who would not. I think it all depends on what exactly you go to a wet market for. If it's ONLY for what you put in your mouth and take home in your basket then the new Aw Taw Kaw market would be a delight. The seafood is still breathtakingly beautiful, the selection of northern Thai foods is still admirable, etc. But to me markets are about much more than that. And that's what's been lost at Aw Taw Kaw, IMO.

Thanks saupin. We had some amazing food in Kota Baru! Hoping to get back soon.

Xander-that's the beauty and the beastliness of Bangkok. So much packed into that one city that it would take decades to discover it all!