The Floating Market of Damnoen Saduak

The Floating Market of Damnoen Saduak is a highlight of the tourist trail through Thailand and one of the main reasons we booked one final week in the country.

Boats line up to take visitors on a tour of the canals that weave their way behind and through a large neighborhood. All along the water are shops and stalls on stilts as well as hundreds of locals in canoes selling everything from fruits to hats, snacks, souvenirs, housewares and more.

For an hour, our motorboat drove us around the bustling floating market, stopping at various vendors along the way to shop for souvenirs. However, once our pilot realized that we were not actually going to buy anything, these pauses became less frequent.

Instead, we got to see a slice of Thai life that was unlike anything I have ever seen before. Vendors were pretty evenly split between men and women of all ages, though my favorite were the old women who often were too busy chatting with each other across their boats to stop and try and hawk their wares.

Rampant Tourism at the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

Unfortunately, as the floating market it is close to Bangkok, thousands of day-trippers descended on the market by 9am. We tried make it all the way from Kanchanaburi before they arrived, but by the time we began our tour there were more tourist motorboats than actual vendor canoes. The waterways were narrow and every time a boat zipped by, all the others around it would splash around.

Boat traffic jams were frequent and the most common sight was of a Western tourist snapping a photo: not that I wasn’t amongst the guilty in this regard. In addition, the arrival of all these tourists has transformed the market into just another tourist trap trying to sell Buddha statues and other souvenirs. Gone are the days when it was frequented by locals just hopping onto their dingy for a quick trip to the veggie boat. Still, well worth a visit.