Vendors refuse to leave night bazaar
(Agencies) - Shopowners at Bangkok's Suan Lum Night Bazaar plan to defy a Monday deadline to pack up and leave while a court decides the fate of one of the city's most popular tourist destinations.
"We will stay. We will not leave," a giftshop owner Wanwisakha Chansorn told Reuters outside her tiny stall in the sprawling market of 3,000 shops, a handful of restaurants and a Thai puppet theatre.
"Nobody plans to leave and we will go along with the majority," she said of her fellow vendors who sell everything from flip flops, fake watches and other tourist trinkets to handmade furniture and silk art.
Shopkeepers like Wanwisakha can generate sales of 10,000-20,000 baht per day while paying a monthly rent of 5,000-8,000 baht.
"Most of our customers are foreigners. Nobody wants to leave at a time when they are making money," she said of a major stop on Bangkok's tourist map with busloads of foreign visitors, mostly Asian, visiting the night market each day.