1/20 Warorot Market and the Gekko Garden

Today we hit the main market in Chiang Mai – Warorot Market, which is spread across 3 huge blocks and has a high Chinese concentration.  We walk up the deserted night market street (amazing!  it is just a different world during the day) and wade into the Warorot Market through a little alley way in between the stalls.  This place is great – stall after stall of food stuff – a lot of seafood – some fresh – some preserved (as you can see from the orange stuff below!)…

…there are grocery stalls and vegetable and spice stalls (the one below sold all different types of chili’s)….

It’s a huge cornucopia of everything.  We wander around for a couple of hours, picking up peanuts ($3 for a kilo) and then decide to buy some hot sausage for lunch. The sausage stalls are all over – so we pick one on the way out and grab a link to take home. 

This is the real deal!  Real Chiang Mai sausage (not like the hot dog the other night. LOL).  Great lunch and we still have left overs.  For dessert we munched on the remaining oranges and Mangosteens.  Will have to replenish those on the next trip to the market.  Then we hang out during the hot afternoon reading and just generally relaxing.

After the sun goes down we head into town to Tiger Kingdom for music and some app’s.  This time we get chicken and pork satay – which are both incredibly good.  We had spied another little joint on the way over that looked like a great place for a drink – and there was a sign out front for spicy calamari salad – which of course got Ed’s attention.  So we meandered back there…..this is the place! Gekko Garden – owned by Rudy from California we think – this place is awesome. It looks like it’s in the middle of the South Pacific with a tin roof, everything made of dark almost unhewn wood (chairs, tables, bar), some sort of plant lining the outside perimeter to shield you from the road. 

 

And the menu!  Holy cow – it’s a book!  With tons of Thai and Western food at excellent prices.

Ed did indeed have the calamari salad – actually he had two it was so good!  I had a pork omelet – awesome as usual!  And wine and beer.  This could become our new hang out – for certain!