Waroros Market

This guide to Waroros Market in Chiang Mai centers on an escalator installed decades ago that barely worked and then sat frozen for fifty years, while vendors like Grandma New, now in her eighties, climbed past it on foot. It traces why the market's management finally took it on, after a month of reinforcing the floor and rewiring the system. The building itself, known locally as Kad Luang, began in 1910 as a trading floor for Thai, Chinese and Sikh merchants in silk, gold and fruit.