We are now in Krabi, having travelled now one thousand miles directly south since Chang Dao.
We're still not far from Myanmar despite all the travelling (about 50 miles as the crow flies would be my guess). We are heading in the right direction now if we wanted to go to Malaysia (still a couple hundred miles away though). On our journey down from Chiang Dao, after our first stop off in Chiang Mai, we had another stop off in Bangkok. Here we took the opportunity to visit a couple of unusual markets. We've been to a lot of markets but none have been like these two!
First was the Maeklong railway market. This is a local working market about an hours drive from Bangkok. the market stalls are arranged either side of the railway line and about 8 times a day the vendors have to retract their stalls to let the train pass through with all the market visitors backs against the stalls standing inches from the train. After the train has passed through most of the tourists drift away but then moments later there is a fresh influx of those wanting to watch the train as it comes back in the opposite direction. once the train has gone through there is a 1-2 hours respite for the locals to get on with their daily business. We followed one of the classic tourist itineraries - we boarded the train a couple of stops down the line (Ban Kalong to be precise) so we could see the market from the train as we passed through, we then hopped off the train at the terminus just after the market and pushed our way through the crowds to see the train pass back through on it's return journey about ½ hour later.
Later on, we made our way to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market. this was another step up from the chaos of the railway market! It is no longer a market where locals would have gone with their goods aboard their canal boat to barter, so it almost entirely tourists now but still feels very authentic. There are market stalls along both sides of the canal and on narrow boats on the water. We got on a boat with around ten other people seated in two rows along both sides. The boat owner steers us along the canal - almost gondola-style. When you would like to stop at a particular stall, you stick your arm in the air and the owner hooks your boat with a long stick and pulls you into them - you then have a few seconds to haggle and complete the transaction! All sorts of things are available - we just went for a coconut ice cream - a speciality here.
What I haven't mentioned is that, in addition to our boat, there are about 100 other boat loads of visitors, Making the traffic heavier than the Bangkok motorways! Occasionally there would be gridlock and you would have to give another boat a gentle nudge to free things up a bit. There were occasions where the traffic would thin out a bit. Usually then a motorised boat would speed through leaving our boat tipping from side to side in it's wake!
This featured blog entry was written by P_M from the blog Exploring South East Asia.
Read comments or Subscribe
