Maeklong Railway Market (Talat Rom Hup) – Samut Songkhram Province.

Maeklong Railway Market: A market on the railway tracks and the story of incredible Thai resilience

Just when we thought Bangkok and Pattaya had already treated us to every possible visual and sensory extreme, we headed west to the province of Samut Songkhram. What we experienced there redefined our concept of ‘extreme shopping’. The Maeklong Railway Market isn’t just a market situated somewhere next to the tracks – it’s a market that has devoured those tracks, digested them and claimed them as its natural ecosystem.

Which came first: the egg, the chicken or the train? (A bit of history)

Before we tell you how this steel monster nearly ate our shoes, we must explain why this place exists in such an absurd form in the first place. Imagine that this market was already operating here back in the 19th century! It was a huge and bustling market where local residents mainly sold fish and seafood from the nearby Gulf of Thailand. Everything changed in 1905, when the authorities of the time decided to build a railway line (the Maeklong Railway) to transport the fresh catch to the capital more quickly.

The problem was that the engineers had marked out and laid the tracks right through the very centre of the functioning market. The authorities presumably assumed that the traders would simply pack up, gather their belongings and politely move to another location. But in Thailand, things are handled differently! The traders apparently said: “Oh, so you’ve built tracks here? No problem, we’ll just have to move our baskets 15 centimetres a few times a day.” And that’s exactly what they did! They didn’t give an inch, and their stubbornness gave rise to one of the most unique places in the world. For over a hundred years, they’ve been waging this daily, perfectly synchronised battle for space with the trains.

Adrenaline, the smell of fish and our brush with a locomotive

Our first impressions upon entering the market? Extreme claustrophobia mixed with utter fascination. As you walk around, you’re literally treading on wooden railway sleepers. The space is so cramped that the sun barely breaks through the thicket of low-hanging fabric canopies. A thick, damp, heavy scent of raw fish, fresh herbs, ripe durian and burning chilli hangs in the air. You walk cautiously, soaking up this distinctive Asian hubbub, sweat pouring down your back, when suddenly a deafening wail of a siren rings out from the distance.

What happens next is pure street magic. We were gripped by a slight panic – we looked around nervously, wondering where to escape to, because, after all, the tracks aren’t the best place for a stroll when a multi-tonne machine is approaching! Meanwhile, the Thai vendors, with the utterly bored expressions of poker players, slowly began to rise from their stools. The ballet begins. In a fraction of a second, like synchronised robots, they pull on hidden strings, fold up their massive umbrellas (hence the local name Talat Rom Hup, meaning ‘Folding Umbrella Market’) and flawlessly move the baskets out of the way. What’s more – they deliberately arrange the vegetables so flat that they’ll slide perfectly under the carriage wheels and won’t get crushed!

And then IT arrives. The train. We squeeze into the stalls, suck in our stomachs, tuck away our cameras and hold our breath. The machine passes right past our noses, literally millimetres away. You feel the heat radiating from the hot engine, the ground vibrating, you hear the screech of iron and feel a gust of wind on your face. You feel like pinching your arm to check whether this is really happening or whether you’re starring in some crazy action film.

The last carriage barely passes our line of sight, and the canopies immediately spring back into place, as if on invisible springs. The trolleys land back on the tracks, and the vendor right next to us goes back to peeling fruit, as if a massive steel monster hadn’t just rolled past a second ago. How long did the evacuation and return to normal take? A dozen or so seconds. We spent a good hour picking our jaws up off the tracks. You simply can’t replicate that mad experience!