Damnoen Saduak Floating Markets

Before Thailand settled down, there was a lot of boat cities along the canals.  My book described them as an amphibious culture.  The Damnoen Saduak floating markets is one of the most popular floating markets still around today.  I reserved a tour of it for about $9.25 and they would come right to my hotel and pick me up in the morning and then drop me off in the afternoon.

The van came to get me at 7:00AM and from there it was 12 people on an hour and a half drive about 110km south if Bangkok.  I knocked out the whole way and woke up right when we got there.  

The floating market was pretty cool.  We started off by taking a 15-minute long boat from the drop-off point to the actual market area.  The area is about a 20 foot (6 meter) wide canal with shops lining the walkways along it.  In the boats were almost the exact same things, ranging from postcards, dresses, fruit, and my favorite ... the deep fried stuff.  They had boilers and vats of oil where the sellers would sell eggrolls.  They boats were docked but I'm sure they can fry a delicious vegetable eggroll while rowing at the same time.




In one if my kid's classes back at ECC, I was teaching tropical fruits to the upper level students and two fruits came up that I didn't know ... mangosteen and rambutan.  The mangosteen is a dark purple, plum-looking fruit a top like a persimmon.  A rambutan is a reddish, pinkish color a little bigger than a lychee, but it has about 2-inch, thick fibers coming out in all directions.  The best desciption is that it looks like a testicle ... yummy! 

I was passing along and this lady selling fruit pulled me in and have me a taste of both ... pretty good.  They taste like lychee.  She started putting them in a bag and before I realized it, I had a bag of about 5 mangosteens and 5 rambutans, which I paid $3 for.  I totally got ripped off, but they were good.

Rambutan

Mangosteen

I walked a little more down the canal and I came across a woman selling postcards.  At first, she told me 1 card for 10 baht (about 30 cents).  I got her to give me three for 25 baht and them she told me that she'd give me four for 30 baht.  I gave her 40 bahts to pay for it, but she said she didn't have change (which seems to happen an awful lot here), so she told me to pick out 1 more and she'll give to me for 40 baht.  She tried to trick me and take back her discount!  So gave the one back and went with he 3 for 25 baht deal.  The whole time, her kid was showing me the postcards, telling me prices, tellig me to buy more, pulling out the calculator ... everything a future tout would do ... and she was only 3 years old.  Kids get to me so I bought it there.  They're dangerous!

I walked around a little bit more, then went back to the van to go see a cobra show ...