POST CARD FROM SIAM -Thailand's Floating Markets

Floating markets are possibly the most photographed places in Thailand.

Representing a centuries-old tradition of doing business, they have shaped culture and community with a new approach to trade.  Produce, fruit, flowers and cooked meals are bought and sold from overloaded boats in an aquatic balancing shopping act where customers buy from boat to boat, boat to pier or vice versa.

Prevailing from prior times, ‘Klong’ (canal) markets portray a reality of daily life that’s slowly dwindling as modern supermarkets and department stores are replacing the more traditional trade systems. For centuries, old Siam's entire economy was managed from small and big sampans -- depending on the volume and range of goods.

A few floating markets however, still survive today in Thailand and they are not only for tourists.

 Justifiably, Bangkok has been christened the ‘Venice of the East’ because the web of inland waterways has become a symbol of the city’s foundation.

Much of Bangkok’s 200 -year history is engaged along the meandering, wide and brown-watered -- foul smelling in places – lifeline that is the Chao Phraya River.  Criss-crossing and twisting its path through the bosom of Bangkok’s inner districts, the river still remains a necessary element in people’s daily lives as they commute to work, school or to shop the markets that flank the intricate grid of narrow side canals built during the reign of Rama IV, a monarch who had great concern for his kingdom’s economic growth.

 Before canals were constructed, transportation was almost non-existent; a connection between two rivers was made through a series of channels thus changing the way in which Siam conducted its business affairs. 

Later on, a bit before many of Bangkok’s water channels were turned into paved roads, the rivers and their many passages provided the only way of getting around this sprawling city. There are still many districts not far from the capital where channeled rivers are thriving arteries of trade and connection. Floating markets arose as a necessity of daily living and unlike other markets all of its business is conducted from inside the boats and alongside the canals.   

The Damnoen Saduak canal floating market is probably the most famous and picturesque of all water markets albeit crowded with tourists and vendors. It is about an hour away from Bangkok’s central business district by car and it may be reached by water boat as well.

Most people who want to experience the floating market make the journey by car and then get in a long canal boat or rice barge with an experienced ‘paddler’ to negotiate the crowded waters. The women paddling along the canals in their sarongs, round bamboo hats, and calloused hands row the boats laden with produce as well as the boats for the customers.

The Damnoen Saduak canal was dug out and built because the soil alongside it was rich and fertile. The area is famous for grapefruit, mangoes, bananas, grapes and coconuts. The canal originally enabled trouble-free trade with other villages and the transport of fruit, produce and flowers to the markets and shops of Bangkok.

Prior to emerging into the slender canal where the floating market begins to develop, we sailed by slow boat appreciating a different slice of traditional life as it proceeds along the many waterways of this land, we saw modest Thai villages on stilts, some with rowboats attached to makeshift bamboo piers; loaded banana trees and palms bent by the weight of coconuts; countless orchids, bougainvillea, tropical lilies and bird of paradise -- all flanking our progress.  On this Sunday morning there was a water buffalo drinking from the river and a man washing clothes at the back of his house.  Further up the channel there were children playing board games on a jetty nearby and we noticed an elderly woman in a wide bamboo hat cycling alongside the inland waterway carrying a basket of green papayas. Surprisingly clean, the canal waters in this area also expose a variety of marine life.  

The Damnoen Saduak canal is more than a means of transportation; it also supplies neighboring growers and their farms with sufficient water for their crops. Through the years, local farmers gradually dug out many inner arteries to connect with the main channel for steady irrigation and to operate independently from rain water.

Life for canal residents still preserves their strong connection to the river; natural, untainted surroundings inhabited by magnificent birds and a traditionally charming lifestyle that overshadows any other in the big city nearby.  

The floating markets of Thailand seem eternally crowded as boats with scores of shoppers and vendors trade agricultural products and local food brought from nearby orchards and farms.

Escorted by a long-established existence, villages along the canal experience ‘real’ -- not staged for tourists -- markets that operate from very early morning until noon. Those markets accessible to tourists though, have longer trading hours and souvenirs.

Floating markets stage a forceful and dramatic show as players hawking produce from rowing boats deliver life as is experienced in Siam.  

That is how I shall remember this land of color: a cacophony of vendors’ voices from every side of the canal and most of all, the peaceful villages shaped by the river and market culture, depicting an existence evocative of a different time period, appropriate to a scene from ‘Anna and the King’.