The Floating Market

Wooden canoes, laden with exotic and brilliantly-colored fruits and vegetables, ply narrow canals. Brightly-clad women prepare elaborate dishes and beckon potential customers as the heavy canoes of the both buyers and sellers bump past each with distinctive heavy "thunks".
The floating market of Damnoen Saduak began years ago with farmers selling their produce on the many canals that crisscross this area. At that time the river was the focus of the community. Water was the primary avenue of both transportation and commerce. The water was used to irrigate the crops and communities grew up around the river. While this is all still true to some extent today, for instance I did see locals selling goods from wooden canoes to residences along the larger canals, the primary reason this particular floating market retains its vibrancy is tourism. Which is fine. One could lament over the large covered shopping areas spreading out from either side of the main floating market canals selling wooden elephants and silk scarves but what would be the point? The floating market would not exists without the tourists and all parties benefit by their presence. I know that I personally loved it. All of it. The sights, the sounds, the smells, and the food.
The experience really began when we transferred from our bus to long-tail boats for a fast and loud trip down larger canals to the market. Long Tails are long, skinny brightly-painted boats powered by small automobile engines mounted on a kind of swivel in the back of the boat. A drive shaft runs through a pipe from the back of the engine to the propeller. The driver guides the boat by turning the entire engine from side to side and lifting the drive shaft and propeller in and out of the water. They’re noisy, colorful, fast, smelly, and not necessarily the most efficient looking watercraft I’ve ever seen all of which makes them, from my foreign-tourist perspective, wonderfully, distinctively Thai. From the long-tails we transferred to the smaller wooden canoes for a trip through the market canals. The kids and I were buying food and fruit from the other boats. None of us were particularly hungry; that didn’t seem the point. The food was delicious and it was particularly interesting to see the women prepare relatively elaborate dishes – such as small muffin/waffle things made from batter poured into molds on a large metal cooking surface, noodle soups of multiple ingredients, and small white semi-translucent turnovers made by spreading a batter on a white cooking drum-like surface which was then folded over the interior ingredients – right in the little wooden canoes. It’s all a matter of perspective but I’m beginning to realize that Thailand can be a real feast for the senses.