
Urban Train Track Doubles as Shopping Alley in Thailand - samsolomon
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/railway-market-urban-train-track-doubles-shopping-alley-thailand/
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pipio21
Ohh, my...

I wonder how many people buying there know the mineral oil and the brake disk
dust trains release are highly carcinogenic given that food is placed directly
under the train.

When I was a kid I used trains for making arrowheads from coins(using train
wheels as presses) and oil residues are everywhere.

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seesomesense
Life is a fatal condition.

You can enjoy it while it lasts or spend your minutes agonising over every
danger.

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noobermin
To be frank, something like this can't happen in the US.

Then again, we can't even deliver clean water to all of our residents. Not
that we aren't on net, better, but we could be.

~~~
brianwawok
Kids can't walk 2 blocks to school in the US.

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BoorishBears
Source? In a town I grew up in kids walked as far as 2 blocks to school.

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wheelerwj
Or further..

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enraged_camel
I was there last month. It's truly surreal.

One thought that occurred to me as I watched the train pass was how many
safety regulations and zoning laws such a market would violate in most Western
cities.

Then I realized: laws and regulations can have the unintended side effect of
"sanitizing" the more interesting parts of our culture, to the point where
everything becomes standard and boring.

It's the reason Seattle's Pike Place Market is a tourist attraction even
though open-air fish markets are incredibly common all around the world.

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Camillo
Zoning laws making everything standard and boring and unlivable is a
specifically American problem.

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JDDunn9
Houston has no zoning and it's none the more interesting for it.

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vertex-four
Could that be because it's the same people and companies building things in
the city, based broadly on what's done elsewhere in America? It's very, very
hard to develop a culture completely independent of the rest of the country,
especially when large amounts of money (and therefore the need to interact
with national entities like banks) become involved.

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saryant
I went to Mae Khlong a few years ago, the long way round: a train to Mahachai,
ferry to Ban Laem and finally the train that actually rolls through the
market.

Other than the train that barrels through every now and then, it's much like
every other market in Thailand. That said, it's a good day trip, especially if
you take a tuk tuk over to the floating market at Amphawa afterward.

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vmlinuz
It's not as extreme, but I used to live in this building:
[https://goo.gl/maps/wqrAnDrxZjs](https://goo.gl/maps/wqrAnDrxZjs)

If you look down, you'll see there's a lively market in the street - clothes
and household stuff on one side, food on the other, including live poultry
when I was there. If you look a little further down, you'll see the tram
tracks running down the middle of the street. Unfortunately, the Street View
cars didn't catch a tram, but they do run down that street pretty regularly...

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nithinr6
This reminds me of the virtual subway store that TESCO implemented in South
Korea - [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-
phones/8601147/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-
phones/8601147/Tesco-builds-virtual-shops-for-Korean-commuters.html)

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derekp7
I'm surprised that there isn't even a painted line to indicate how far back
you have to stand to be clear of the train.

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andreareina
In Japan a lot of traditional shopping districts are the ground-floor
component of elevated train tracks.

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bobsil1
Elevator pitch: AirBnb for markets

