People of Damnoen Saduak

Last Friday early morning I went off for a photo trip to Damnoen Saduak Floating Market.

The idea was to meet up with my friend Leo at the Southern Bus Terminal (Sai Tai Mai) and from there catch some public transport to the market.

Great idea but the first minivan had left already at 06.30 and the next would be at 08.00, so much for our early start…

No big deal, we had a coffee, wandered around a bit (it’s a big place), and enjoyed 'khao man gai' just before departure.

Thanks to 80 THB tickets we had decent seats but unfortunately a lousy driver whose driving style left a lot to be desired.

Somehow we arrived in one piece at our destination, although the end of the line was at a pier, still a km from the actual market!

As a result, we either had the choice of walking or taking an 800 THB long-tail boat!

Exploring a floating market by boat seemed the most obvious thing to do, so we coughed up the desired amount and hopped on board, requesting the ‘captain’ to go slowly since we wanted to take photos.

As usual Leo was armed with serious camera gear and lenses, he probably could take x-ray shots from a 1 km distance!

At least my new mobile wasn’t too bad but peanuts compared to his fancy gear.

Slowly moving along through the khlong, at first encountering only the occasional tourist shop and boats from the opposite direction.

This changed soon and culminated in a massive boat traffic jam at the heart of the market!

Very slowly we squeezed our boat through this chaos and explored a bit more until our captain called it quits.

The huge number of tourist shops along both sides of the khlongs became a bit exhausting after a while, especially considering they’re all selling more or less the same stuff…