A somewhat typical Yaowarat street scene, with street-food carts, pedestrians, and motor vehicles all competing for a piece of the pavement

Outdoor kitchen in an alleyway

Coffee, cocoa, and tea from a stand displaying an image of the king, Rama IX

Pharmacy with medicinal herbs and Western-style medicines as well

Street scene with two-man police motorbike, a common sight in Thailand

Low-overhead retailing, with dresses lining the sidewalk

Alleyway jammed with tuk-tuks and shoppers on foot

A variety of dried seafood

Fresh fruit and fruit drinks

This woman is making jui guai, a Chinatown specialty made from fried minced garlic and chopped preserved turnips or radishes, with ground pork optional, all seasoned with a thick soy sauce or fish sauce.This topping is placed on the white cakes seen on the right, which are made from rice flour.

Street-food seller also preparing what appears to be jui guai

Preparing fresh-roasted chestnuts

A smiling couple sharing a bottle of the ubiquitous Coca-Cola hovers over a pair of diners in a hole-in-the-wall Chinatown restaurant.

Apart from stores found in higher-end shopping malls, most of Thailand's retailers seem to prefer easy accessibility to elegance of presentation.

Visitors to the indoor markets in Bangkok’s Chinatown are confronted with an almost bewildering warren of individual merchandisers whose overflowing displays line narrow aisles that swarm with heavy customer traffic. The woman in this photo is selling dried shrimp, squid, mushrooms, and other items.

An offering of dried fish maw in the plastic bags hanging overhead along with a variety of other foodstuffs. The smallish yellow morsels that the woman is scooping into a bowl are gingko seeds, from the gingko biloba tree. One way they are eaten is in congee, a rice porridge, called jōk in Thai.

Fresh fish, crabs, and other seafood

Prepared dishes with pork and grilled duck

Mostly tea-related accompaniments as well as tea itself: jasmine, Chinese green tea, Japanese green tea, oolong

Slicing green mango over a case with fresh pineapple, watermelon, and cantaloupe

Fresh fish, duck, ducks' bills, chicken, and pork are among the items offered by this lady.

The plastic bags hold pink, white, and pastel-colored dumplings made from sticky (glutinous) rice flour, which is often mixed with pumpkin, taro, or pandanus for color, flavor, and aroma. After boiling, the dumplings are put in cold water and later added to boiled, sweetened coconut milk. The yellow fruits in the bags in the right foreground are gingko seeds.

Shop selling a variety of cookies and snack foods

A back alley and one of Chinatown's denizens

A Chinese temple in Yaowarat, Wat Mangkon Kamalawat, built in 1871 as a Mahayana Buddhist place of worship. (No photography allowed inside.)

Guardian dragon at the entrance to Wat Mangkon Kamalawat

As suggested above, the streets in Bangkok’s Chinatown become a kind of obstacle course, with vendors and bargain-hunting shoppers competing with tuk tuks, delivery vans, and other vehicular traffi􀊦c for the limited space available.

Sunglasses seller catching a bite of lunch

In the midst of all the retail operations, this altar, where one can pray for one's ancestors

A slow day for sales at this street-side stand