On Day 3 in Bangkok we went off to the Chao Phraya Floating Market in the morning. From memory, because of the delay on the first day, the tour itinery had to be reshuffled and possibly because of that we didn’t get to go to the “proper” floating market.
Thailand has alot of waterways and alot of commerce is conducted on them. The locals who live next to/ on the waterways buy household goods, groceries, etc, from vendors on little boats passing through their stretch of the river. Pretty convenient eh? During the peak market hours the whole river is jammed so full with little boats that one can “browse” the marketplace by stepping from boat to boat.
Unfortunately due to the traditional way of life being replaced by people moving to more modern housing like apartment blocks (I think) demand for these sorts of markets have decreased, and the markets themselves have gotten smaller n smaller until only the boats catering to tourists are left.
The markets still exist and are busier the farther away you get from the city centre of Bangkok though.
The initial plan was to wake up reaaally early and to bus it all the way up to these still-flourishing markets. But we didn’t have enough time and just visited the one that was in the middle of Bangkok.
There were only a few boats, all selling stuff for tourists only. Quite uninteresting, but I feel sorry for the vendors because no one really wanted to buy their crappy souvenirs…
The scenary on the banks was reasonable. Actually it looked a bit dull because it was a cloudy day. the most exciting part of the boat ride though were the GIGANTIC catfish in the river. Many of them easily reached up to 1m in length. You could pay for loaves of bread to feed the fish. I love feeding fish :3
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