OTOP City Fair - last day, Dec 26, 2010, at Impact

In the spirit of the holiday season my family made a mad dash on the last day of the OTOP City Fair at Impact Center to buy silk. We were out the door at 5:00 p.m. after a party at our house attended by 15 very active four-year-olds…

Crossing all of Bangkok on a relatively quiet Sunday night took less than 30 minutes on the Expressway. The taxi fare was 210 baht (US$7.00) and the tolls were 80 baht ($2.67).

My colleague Bob Latini had made the fair sound so exciting that my wife Noina, 4-year-old Samantha, 3-year-old Benjamin and myself went even though the closing time was 9:00 p.m.

Sure enough, this was one of the best fairs of the season. Row after row of silks, jewels and clothes.

We were on a mission to buy a number of different silks, and we started by visiting one of the many information booths as we entered the exhibition hall. We had the staff check their master list for the merchant that we were looking for – whom was not found. However, we did know the city that the silk weaver was from so we went to that area which was identified by letters on the walls.

In this case we were looking for Khorat, a city in the silk region of Isan, so the letters were “MMM.” We went at lightning speed with the two kids and one stroller to “MMM,” which was easy to find.

We did not find the silk weaver that we were looking for but we did find six other weavers from Khorat, Khon Kaen and Surin whose wares we liked.

Shopping was a pleasure even with two wild kids; the vendors were very patient and fed our children snacks while we selected our silks.

Our whirlwind shopping spree ended just before 9:00 with us loaded down with silks.

After a quick stop at the food area where we bought dried fish and noodles, we were on our way home – finding a taxi out front was no problem.

David