Amphawa Floating Market

Relatively unknown to Western travelers, Amphawa is a river market in Samut Songkram province, about an hour’s drive southwest of Bangkok. Many locals still live a somewhat traditional lifestyle, paddling around on canoes to go fishing, as a means of transport, and to sell or trade goods in the market like in olden days. The market portion that caters to tourists does not really get going until around 3 in the afternoon, when shops along the canals open for business and vendors begin to set up their stalls. The central attraction for the market is the leisurely pace in which one can soak up the atmosphere by perusing the goods for salekey things include traditional Thai desserts, screenprinted.

T-shirts, vintage collectibles, paintings, handmade stationery and gifts. Guesthouses and homestays line the tiny ‘boardwalk’ that flank the narrow canals. Towards the evening, more merchants on canoes hang out by small piers where visitors can sample some delicious foodstuff such as boat noodle soup, Pad Thai, grilled squid, and green curry, while the longtail motorized boats start lining up waiting for customers to board. Trips on the river can be arranged, costing about 50 baht per person if the boat has 8 passengers, or about 400-500 baht if privately chartered, regardless of the number of people.

Touring the riverbanks offers a glimpse of local homes and customary routines in this rural district. Sightseeing involves speeding up the riverways and disembarking atcertain temples. Perhaps the most wellknown is Wat Bang Kung, which features a chapel ensconced in a big banyan tree’s serpentine branches, with a large Buddhaimage obscured inside. The temple is in the compound of Khai Bang Kung, a famous old Naval Forces Camp in Thai history, dating back to the late Ayutthaya period.The Camp was left deserted for almost 200 years, and then established as a Boy Scout camp again there in onor of King Taksin.

The temple grounds have an interesting hodge podge of sights to behold. Most photogenic are the dozens of life-size soldier statues depicting Muay Thai trainingand sword sparring. Most bizarre, however, definitely must be the 6-legged tortoise and wild boars in and enclosed in a mud pen.After nightfall, the last attraction to end the evening with is observing fireflies hovering in bushes along the river, blinking on and off like tiny beacons signaling seafaringsailors.