The Thai market where you come face to fender

Half a dozen times a day, visitors who aren’t in the know get the surprise of their lives to find themselves suddenly face-to-fender on the narrow, crowded, open-air alleyway in which they are shopping, staring into the front of a pulsing diesel-hauled passenger train.

That's the result of a railway line that’s run some 70km from Bangkok since 1904, slicing right through the Maeklong market and its hundreds upon hundreds of stall-holders, who sell everything from meats and seafoods, groceries and fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, clothing and flowers, to freshly-cooked Thai foodstuffs at dozens of little snack bars and cafés.

So busy is it, in fact, that vendors pile their wares right up to, and in some cases, even into the very rail track on their narrow footways. And then on those half dozen times a day when a little warning bell tinkles over the loudspeaker system, and a few minutes later there’s the blasting of a diesel locomotive’s horn, they quickly, yet calmly, move their goods back from between the rail lines, and drag back their overhanging shade awnings, to clear a path for the approaching train.

When that train’s crawled by with carefully gauged centimetres to spare, they simply put everything back in place on the footway and between the rail lines again, until the next warning bell tinkles and the next train horn sounds, and a path must be cleared once more... six times a day, seven days a week.