The floating market
Venturing outside of Bangkok gets slightly more difficult for the self-guided, particularly just over a weekend trip. So, with a 6am wake up call and quick breakfast, we were off in our large but comfortable Toyota van with driver and our tour guide, Wendy.
The view from James Bond's seat
We drove for an hour south of the city before coming to the launching point for our floating market tour. Exiting our vehicle, we took what would be our second of three forms of transportation for the morning, the “James Bond boat.” Apparently since Gold Finger was filmed in Thailand in the 1960’s, one of the traditional Thai boats has become known for its use in the film, at least according to our tour guide. Whatever the name, the boat could fly and gave us perhaps our biggest AH! WE’RE IN THAILAND moment of the weekend. Scooting down the water at about 40 miles an hour for minutes on end, we shot deeply into the wilderness of Thailand. Every few minutes we would have to slow to a near halt and make a turn, as the canals were tight and all the corners hard ninety-degree angles. Eric took some great video from this portion of the trip, but I am not sure how to post it here, so if you’d like to see e-mail me.
You can see the steam in the air.
After a few minutes of what seemed solo boating, we began to fall in line with other boats and it was evident that we, along with half of the tourists in Bangkok, were approaching the floating market. Although touristy now, the floating market in Thailand has a long tradition coming from the days when local farmers and villagers would meet in the morning on their boats to exchange their goods and enjoy freshly made meals. The market that we found had remaining hints of quaint practicality but was beginning to boil over with a shrink-wrapped tourism. Our treasure purchases ended up to be food purchases rather than trinkets. The boats inched along full of people, as temporary lanes of traffic emerged and sellers peddled their goods – all this with the surreal feeling of doing it all while floating. I still have an occasional craving for our first and best purchase – coconut pancakes. Yum, yum, and yeow! These small sweet pancakes came served in a banana leaf and had a hint of coconut milk. The other food we enjoyed was purchased for us by our guide – a pomelo – a fruit, similar to the grapefruit in its tartness but slightly sweeter and also plumper and firmer in its composition. The segments we had came wrapped, clean, and easy to devour.
Cooking from above
The tourist merchandise was set up on the side of the canals for easy pointing and purchase.
Returning from the floating market, our tour made a stop at a handcraft market. Apparently as more and more of the local crafts have become subjugated by factory produced items, someone came up with the idea of bringing local craftsman together in one working location where people could view the traditional production processes and also purchase goods. Although it felt a little forced, we were fascinated to see some of the wood carving action. Many of the pieces were made from teak wood (large murals that took between half a year and a year for two men to complete) and impressively massive chairs made from entire stumps and roots of local trees. We only purchased a couple of small coconut bowls but there was a wide variety of ready to ship handicrafts that were tempting.
The detail on these carvings was amazing.
A big chair
Temple of Ramma IV
Our last stop for the day with the guide was at the Temple of Ramma IV. It plays host to the tallest chedi in Thailand and may have been my favorite of the temples that we saw. I don’t know what it was about it, perhaps it was just having a really good guide with us that could explain everything, but it was fascinating. The bell-like shape on the horizon was just the beginning of its splendor. Inside the chedi that was visible was another older chedi, completely encased but still standing. There was a functioning Buddhist school on site and the most complete selection of the different Buddha poses that are meaningful for the Thais that I saw. Our guide gave a really good explanation that I think I will expand up for my next post.
A close-up of the chedi.
The open-air school room at the temple.
From there, it was back to Bangkok, a long drive with good traffic, and a really long drive on the day we went. It was interesting though to see great fields of salt being harvested for export and also some small manufacturing plants. It was also nice to have the time to ask our guide all of our accumulated questions from the previous day.
