BANGKOK, THAILAND
It’s both amazing and completely unsurprising that a place like Tewet market could exist in Bangkok. Somebody forgot the middle ground – the sparkling glass and concrete of MBK have somehow failed to render Tewet’s old tarps and dirty canvas sheets obsolete. No matter how many Dairy Queens and 7-11s they build the market’s dissected animals, suffering sea life and unidentifiable pastes keep commerce in a dingy maze of fetid puddles and jerry-rigged shopfronts.

Tourism literature calls this “vibrance.”

If MBK is the way the city wants to be seen, then Tewet market is like running into Bangkok drunk out of her mind on a weeknight (I’m not sure where sex tourism fits into this analogy). Thailand may be close to a giant theme park for Westerners already, but as long as people are willing to buy live catfish out of half an oil barrel its soul will show through.