Floating Away

Day 315
The day before I had booked a couple of day trips and had to be ready to go at 7 am for the first one. I was headed to the Damnoen Saduak floating market, about one and a half hours away. I had thought about doing this from Bangkok but decided to skip it. Kanchanaburi is much closer which meant that I would get there before all the tourist groups leaving from Bangkok.

There were two others in my group, but as it was really early no one was really feeling chatty. When we arrived to the market we climbed into a small motor powered boat. Almost right away we were passing boats overflowing with fruits and vegetables. It wasn't long before most of the none boat shops were only selling souvenir's. The people working there had long poles with hooks and would pool the boat in. We only had to pass a couple of the stands to realize that all the stuff was the same. None of us bought anything.

The central part of the market was the best. Some of the boats operated as food carts and there were noodles and other street foods to be eaten. Several people tried to sell us beer. It was only 8:30 in the morning! I was disappointed with how small the number of foodstuffs that were being sold. The place was really taken over by souvenir boats and stands. The only saving grace was that the tour groups hadn't arrived yet, my prediction had been correct.

The other couple on the tour grabbed a bus to Bangkok and I fell asleep on the ride back. When I got to my hotel I grabbed breakfast and decided to take a nap. There wasn't really much left for me to do in the town so I decided to just hang out and spending the rest of the day reading.

For dinner I tried to catch the movie again but once again couldn't really hear. There was a Canadian guy sitting at the table next to mine who was very loudly wondering what tiger balm was for. I answered and we ended up chatting. We went to a bar with a pool table for a beer. As it turned out we were both horrible and the game lasted ages.

I had another early day so we didn't stay out late. Before we said goodnight we made tentative plans to meet the next evening.