Trip to a Floating Market

16 November 2014

Woke up at 7 AM to meet our tour guide at 8 AM in the lobby of our hotel.  Went downstairs and watched the Bangkok Marathon go by.  The guide was late and we started to worry a bit since we paid for the tour in advance online….but at worse we were going to lose only $40 USD.  Then the hotel owner came out and told us that the guide called and she was having trouble finding the hotel.  She was only 2 minutes away.  Finally Piyaporn showed up and was very sorry for being late…no big deal, she was only 10 minutes late.

She said that although a taxi would be the fastest way to get there, she will take us on a ferry to cross the river to teach us how the ferry system works…great idea!  Here is the ferry that we took.  We went about 3 stops at a stop on the other side of the river.  By the way, the ferry ride cost 15 Baht (50 cents) per person.

Ferry to cross the river.

The stop we got off had a hospital that Piyaporn said was a world class hospital and that the King of Thailand is there currently and has been living there for a while since he is not well.  I don't know what the service inside is like, but the building is really cool:

The top hospital in Thailand.

She also suggested that if we want some good food to come to this area.  There is a medical school here, so the restaurants are geared to students, thus they are inexpensive, but very good.  I don't think we will come all the way over here for food, but it is good to know.

We (Piyaporn) hailed a taxi and 30 minutes and just over $3 USD later we were arrived at the Ladmayom Floating Market.

The idea of the floating market is that not too long ago there were no roads in this area. This area is full of agriculture (farms, coconut groves, mango groves, etc). The people that lived here only used the canals as transportation.  On the weekends all the people would take their boats to a market area and buy fresh produce, meat, and seafood from each other.  Eventually the roads were built and the market ceased to exist.  Then in the 1980's ( I think that is what Piyaporn  told us) the city decided to bring back the weekend market to give the local farmers a way to sell their goods to the public.  Today, middle class people from Bangkok fill the market on weekends to buy fresh food and to eat amazing food from the various food stands scattered throughout the market.

Although the entire market is now ground based, there is a canal boat tour that is available to take you by some of the canal houses where people still live without roads.  For only $1.25 each we got a 30 minute ride up and down the canal were we saw women cooking "boat noodles" for market goers and other foods being sold directly off the boat to the people in the market.  Here is our boat guide and a picture on our boat.  There were about 9 of us on the boat plus the "captain."

Here are some highlights of the canal boat ride:

Lotus seeds. We actually picked some out and ate them.

After the ride we shopped around for varies dishes to eat for lunch and found a table and sat to a great meal:

Fresh fruit, mussels, thai salad for lunch.

There was so much food to choose from making it hard to settle for a few things, but this is just day 2 for us in Thailand, so there is much more food to be eaten.  One of my favorite things I did find at the market is a curry fish ball grilled on a stick.  I got one right at the start of our tour and then needed to buy one more just before leaving.  Tim went for something more familiar…grilled chicken:

Here are highlights of the floating market:

We took a taxi all the way back to our hotel for the cost of just over $6 USD and wound up in our hotel room around 1 PM.  8 hours later we awoke and realized that we had just slept our day away and now what are we going to do for the rest of the night were we won't be too tired.  Around 11:30 PM we left our room for dinner and a beer that cost under $8 (the beer was half that bill).  They were out of our familiar Chang Beer that we drank last night, so we got bottles of Leo Beer (kind of a cool label) that was a bit more expensive, but the taste was definitely smoother.

I am now here in the room typing this blog at 2:17 AM.  I have to finish this and get to bed since we have a full day planned for tomorrow.  Remember in 15 Nov blog that I said we didn't have time to go the famous Golden Palace…well, our tour guide today said that we can't miss it, so we are going to add one more night in this hotel and tour the Golden Palace tomorrow, and hopefully have energy to walk to the Golden Mount which is supposed to be cool as well.  Until tomorrow then…