Amphawa Floating Market is a Thai amusement park thrill ride for the stomach, eye sight, and all other human organs. The brilliant array of sounds, smells, tastes, and sights, are a mind rushing and energizing display of Thai culture at it’s finest. In the world of Bangkok that so caters to the Western tourist, Amphawa is still very much a local Thai oriented market. It can be a relief to know that everything displayed is not just a show to please foreigners, but more to enthrall Bangkok residents on a weekend outing.
The sleepy canal in the town of Samut Songkhram, Thailand, is revved into full gear on the weekends to become the utopian Amphawa Floating Market. It is dotted with boutiques selling clothes, restaurants serving eloquent treats, woks producing unworldly aromas, and people baby stepping from stall to stall, following their noses or lust of shopping. Floating in the canal are numerous wooden boats all weighted down with food and produce, propane tanks, and all other cooking accessories necessary for a self sufficient boat bobbing eatery. Each boat owner proudly specializes in their own particular Thai food and delivers an immaculate dish right off the wake. Browsing the colorful and artistic scene of helter-skelter is like being part of a modern ready-made piece of artwork or a drama that was well rehearsed.
One of the most interesting things to watch at Amphawa Floating Market is the movement of food and money from boat vendor to server, then to customers, and vice versa. The boaters who happen to be jammed in the middle or on the outer edges of the heavenly floating blob are forced to use a lengthy bamboo pole with a plate attached to the end. This genius pole and plate device is used to deliver food as well as bring back the earnings.
By the way, don’t forget to sing a bone chilling, window breaking, karaoke track at one of the stations set up along the canal to the hundreds of unfortunate listeners.
how wonderful is that if one has to do it every day? Inclusive of the smell from the river?
Originally posted by dangerboi:how wonderful is that if one has to do it every day? Inclusive of the smell from the river?
.....extra flavour, why not?