The third-smallest province in Thailand, Samut Songkhram, is increasingly becoming the centre of my world.

Markus and Tam have two friends visiting town this weekend, not together but separately.  Jon is one of Markus’ college classmates and now lives in San Francisco with his wife.  David is a former New Yorker who has lived and worked in Hong Kong for the past six years. 

After deciding that a road trip out of Khrungthep might be a nice event for them, Markus was looking for suggestions of destinations.  I mentioned the nighttime floating market at Amphawa, the less-touristy counterpart to the early morning Damnoen Saduak floating market.  That sounded appealing, so Tawn made arrangements to hire a van and driver (1500 for eight hours, not including gasoline and tolls).

We set off about 1:30 Saturday afternoon, Tawn, his friend Jack, and I.  After picking up Markus, Tam, Pune (Tam’s sister), David and Jon we hit the expressway and two hours and eighty-plus kilometers later were in Amphawa, which is about 15 kilometers downstream from Bangkhonthii.  Parking on the far side of the Mae Klong river at a temple, we took a ferry across to the town itself. 

Right: Picture of Tawn and Pune.  Below: Tawn and me.

The floating market and its surrounding street stalls are notable for a number of reasons:

♦ Unlike Damnoen Saduak, where you generally rent a boat and float among the vendors, (although you can rent a boat at Amphawa if you wish) several sections of the main canal in the small town of Amphawa are lined with wide concrete steps leading down to the water.  About ten steps down to the water, they remind me of nothing so much as the seating in the Alcatraz Prison exercise yard.  Bonus question: can you spot Tawn in this picture?  Hint: he’s the only one in orange.

♦ The vendors have their boats pulled up alongside the steps and you can go down to buy food.  In some cases the vendor has someone working the steps to collect money and deliver food.  In other cases, money and food are passed from person to person in the crowd, the way that one buys a hot dog at an American football stadium.

Some vendors had a plastic basket on the end of a long bamboo pole, and would use it to reach the people sitting further away.  Left: notice the vendor with the “basket on a stick” in the yellow shirt, center.

♦ On both the water and the two surrounding streets, the many vendors offer a wide variety of (mostly) foods as well as a few other items.  There are no fake Louis Vuitton bags.  The selection of items is widely varied – very few people sell the same things, so browsing is quite interesting.

♦ The crowd – and it was crowded because Saturday was Mother’s Day (the Queen’s Birthday) here in Thailand – was almost completely Thai with very few foreigners.  The vendors were thusly organized, so as a tourist you felt more like you were being treated just like the Thai visitors.

♦ There is a very nice temple and park nearby that celebrates the birth of King Rama II, who was born in Amphawa.  It includes a restored traditional Thai house that is done up with antiques from the Rama II era.  This adds to the variety of things to do and see in the area, making for a full afternoon and evening.

♦ There are rental boats that can take you to see the fire flies (hing hoy in Thai – ask a Thai person to say “fire flies” three times fast) in the nearby tidal marshes.  Unfortunately, our boat arrangements were canceled by the boat operator who apparently received a better offer so had left well before we were scheduled to depart.

While we were disappointed not to be able to go see the fire flies, we had a fun time overall.  I’ll add this to the “take the guests to see” list.

All of us on the steps next to the khlong (canal).  From left to right: David (in blue), Jon, Markus, Pune, Tam, Chris, and Tawn.

It was so nice, why don’t we go there again?

Jon is a cyclist, so Markus had made arrangements with me to go biking on Sunday morning.  Before we had planned to go to Samut Songkhram on Saturday for the floating market, I had already considered going there for biking on Sunday.

We went ahead with the plan and did a 31-km circuit, using the schoolin Bangkhonthii as the starting point.  We travelled back down to Amphawa along the main road, crossed the bridge to the west bank, and then worked out way back up. 

Along the way we stopped at the Siamese Cat Centre, two of the more historically-significant temples, and then crossed back over the Mae Khlong River at the Catholic church.  It took about two hours of riding to do the circuit as Jon’s rental bike kept slipping gears except when it was in first.

It was a gorgeous day for biking, temperatures were pretty cool and there was a really pleasant breeze.  Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to do that ride again in the future and explore some of the smaller side roads that cut through the coconut and banana plantations.