Amphawa Floating Markets - Sunday, November 14

There are two people in from our Corporate offices this week – Lisa Pereira from Boston and Steven Martin from London. So Tewtip arranged a day trip this past Sunday to give them a chance to see some traditional Thai villages, a few temples, and the Amphawa floating markets. The floating markets are about 90 minutes north of Bangkok so we left early – around 9:30 AM – to avoid the Bangkok traffic. Seemed to work well, since we got there pretty quickly. The fact that the driver was doing about 130 kh/hr didn’t hurt either.

First stop was a temple – I don’t recall the name. But it was interesting to visit since it was “live” – lots of local Thais praying, with incense burning and people banging on gongs and drums. Lots of atmosphere. And lots of people putting gold leaf onto Buddha statues. According to Tewtip, people pray to the Buddha for things and they “bribe” (her word) the Buddha by applying little bits of gold leaf to the statue. It comes on a little piece of paper, with the gold leaf on top. You peel off the back and then stick it on the statue.

Once you get what you prayed for, you then come back to the temple to “pay up” – usually by leaving food or flowers. At this temple, there were lots of baskets of food – especially eggs.

We made a few other stops on our way to the floating markets – another temple with more people applying gold leaf to statues and a weird – and a little creepy – line-up of traditional Muay Thai boxer statues.

But the truly weirdest thing at that stop was a statue of a local “goddess.” Tewtip translated the sign for us – something about a goddess who lived in the forest in this area and how the local people prayed to her. Okay, fine. But here’s a picture of the goddess. Tell me it doesn’t look like Cher? From the 1980s.

And the offerings to this statue only reinforced the Cher theme. There were two, glass-enclosed rooms on either side of the statue. On the left were about 20 dresses – very ornate, in all different colors. On the right were about five or six make-up tables, with mirrors.

And at the foot of the statue itself was a small red basket, with nail polish and fake eyelashes. Guess you want to tailor your offerings to the specific icon.

Tewtip had arranged lunch for us at a local restaurant. The food was r-e-a-l-l-y good – pad thai with shrimp, two huge (and whole) fried sea bass, some tom yam soup with more shrimp, and whole mackerel (smaller than in the US) in a sweet tamarind sauce. Seemed like a very local Thai place – we were the only foreigners there. Here are a few photos of the restaurant. I wish I had thought to snap some photos of the food before we all dug in.

Finally arrived at the Amphawa floating markets – and they were packed. And it was really hot – well over 90 degrees. We got there about 3:00, but the markets don’t really get going until later in the afternoon. I can’t imagine how it could get even more crowded – it was already a sea of humanity when we arrived. The idea is that the vendors are in the river and you walk along the banks and they sell to you from their boats. Most of the vendors in the river seem to be selling fish – mostly squid. There are also buildings along the banks for the river and a boardwalk, with vendors selling t-shirts and candy and whatnot.

After about an hour or so there, with the heat and the crush of the crowds, we were all done and looking forward to an air-conditioned ride back to Bangkok. A long day, but a good one.