Day 6 - Sat, Nov 8, 2008 - Taling Chan Floating Market (Bangkok)

Floating markets were common in Thailand a few decades ago, but they're more and more rare now and the few that do exist are mostly for the benefit of the tourists selling kitch or simply floating food stands. We picked the Taling Chan floating market because it sounded not too touristy and was relatively quick and easy to get to* (see optional sidenote below) - it's within Bangkok city limits, accessible by city bus, and fairly close to the center, rather than a few hours away like the larger Damnoen Saduak market.

Taling Chan starts out as a typical roadside market. Stalls line each side of the road, selling knicknacks, fruit and fresh Thai food:


However, at this market, there's an added twist when you get to the end of the market because it opens out onto a pier where there are a number of longboats tied up preparing food:






The food looked amazing so we decided to sit down and enjoy some fresh - we settled on a salt and herb crusted BBQ fish with rice (total price approx 7.50CAN$). We weren't sure at first how to order, and figured we'd do the old "point and smile" technique, but in the end a Thai-English
showed up and so we didn't have to fumble around too much.


* The trip to Taling Chan is a good example of why, when we're getting around on our own steam in a new place, it's best not to be in a too much of a hurry and to just shrug off the detours. So far, we're pretty good at this.

We're walkers, and we can walk for hourse, so though by this point we'd been exploring Bangkok for a few days by this point, the city bus system was new to us. Our trusty guide book says the following on how to get to the Taling Chan Market:

"Taling Chan is in Thonburia dn can be reached from Bangkok's Th Ratchadamnoen Klang or Th Ratchaprasong via air-con bus 79 (16 baht, 25 minutes)."

This isn't as convoluted as it sounds at first: Thonburi is just a section of Bangkok; "Th Ratchadamnoen Klang" and Th Ratchaprasong" are names of streets, ones that were just a short walk from our hotel. The catch, for us, was "Bus 79" because it didn't say which side of the street to catch it on. It seems like that would be obvious enough, but from the map it looked like either direction would work.

The trip then turned into a Family Circus "Billy gets side-tracked" map. We started on the norh side, couldn't find a stand with bus 79, crossed over to the south side (8 lanes of traffic, 1 median, 2 lights), found a bus 79 stand, got on the next 79 bus, discovered from the ticket seller that we were going in the wrong direction, still had to pay the fare, got off, crossed over to the north side via a busy street with no crosswalk, foudn a stand for bus 79, watched the bus drier for the next 79 wave as he drove past us (full?), caught the following 79, paid for hte ticket, and told the ticket seller in our terrible accent where we wanted to go along with some signals to ask if she'd let us know when we got there, then crossed our fingers that she'd remember (she did).

As always, we learned useful stuff from our 1hr 45 minutes in Thai bus heaven: A bus number runs in both directions on the same street (doesn't always work that way everywhere you go); and, when you buy a bus ticket, the price is sometimes adjusted for how long you'll be on, so they're pretty diligent about telling you where your stop is (very handy; we picked up on this on the way back from Taling Chan).

So, learning those things made the lost time not a total waste of time.

(on the right side of the street) :