Markets: Chin Haw Market

A lot is made out of the Lanna culture when you’re in Chiang Mai, and how old and distinct it is from Central Thailand. While that is all good and true, it is also oversimplifying what a real patchwork quilt of cultures the “Rose of the North” really is, and how truly awesome that makes the former Lanna capital. So when you stumble upon a place like Chin Haw Market — open only on Friday mornings — you want to cherish it, and go there again and again.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Chin Haw market only offers items made by the Chin Haw people: a Muslim-Chinese group whose extensive travels resulted in bringing influences all the way from Persia via to Silk Road to Northern Thailand, resulting in dishes like khao soy. But it’s a mash-mash of all of the “minority” groups in the area, like the Muslim-Thais selling “cha chak” (“shaken tea”, poured from a great height with much ceremony) to beef satay to samosas, available at the entrance to the market.

A little ways into the market, a vendor offering various vats of curry with rice is attracting a long queue, which of course piques our interest. We head over to have a look and are rewarded with possibly the most beautiful biryani we’ve ever seen, peppered liberally with colorful spices that glow like jewels in the sun.

Further on down the way, lined with vendors selling all manner of typical market food like fried tofu and chicken rice, a vendor at the end of the aisle threatens to dominate the whole space. It’s the halal Hamza Goat Farm stall, and its main product is prominently displayed next to the vendor’s head:

But just across from this meaty display, a hill tribe couple roasts local peanuts, marked with the “tiger stripe” pattern that makes them unique.

Just a few steps away, a pair of Chinese men offer their house-cured Yunnanese ham, traditional cured sausages, and sausages liberally seasoned with the flavor of the moment in Thailand, Sichuan-style “mala”.

And next to them, a Yunnanese couple serve up fresh pancakes made from just-shucked corn. We take a bite when they are plucked off the griddle, and they are everything they look like they’d be: warm, sweet, soft and comforting.

We want to taste more, but we’re heading into a section that is not quite Yunnanese, and not quite … well, we don’t know. We ask a vendor in Thai what a tangled root-looking vegetable is called, and he responds, “I don’t know its name in Thai.”

Further on, a vendor is making a dish that we’ve never seen before in Thailand, layering a thin crepe with scrambled egg and scallions on one side, then flipping it over to receive two big lashings of sauce and folding it over crispy rectangles of dough — something similar to what we’ve seen in Taiwan. What is it exactly and where does it come from? Hell if we know.

But now we’re heading to more well-known ground. A scrum of customers surrounds one particular vendor, serving the fish noodle dish known as mohinga (aka “Myanmar’s national dish”) as quickly as she can plate it. We try to order, but she gestures at a table, already waiting for their noodles, and then the line that is waiting to sit at that table next. “We’ll come back later,” we say, thinking later = sometime next year.

Finally, after a bit of maneuvering, more crowds and the sight of stressed faces lead us to a covered tent, where handmade dim sum is being doled out to an anxious crowd of customers. Next to him is the Shan table, serving “khao ganjin” (rice cooked in pork blood and wrapped in banana leaves), their take on “khao soi” — sans coconut milk and with more of a nam ngiew-like ragu — and a dish we’ve never seen before: a tofu porridge made of green peas and a thickening agent, left overnight in plastic bags, drizzled in broth and seasoned with deep-fried garlic oil and fresh chervil leaves.

We want to eat more, but we are full to bursting when we finally make our way out of the market, clutching our purchases to our aching bellies, the sound of Chinese songs blaring in our ears. In a world that seems like it wants to pare itself down to homogeneity and conformity, it’s comforting to have places like the Chin Haw market still around, ready to add more flavor and genuine surprise to our lives.