Maeklong – Thai market for adrenaline rush seekers
Folding awnings shade a narrow alleyway covered with makeshift market stalls. They mostly consist of plastic...
An older man, tucked under a reed hat, stirs with a long ladle content of an aluminium pot that steams
on a portable burner.
Instantly, aroma of a reach meat broth, cooked vegetables, herbs and spices fills the air. Carefully, nearly in slow motion, the chef gets up from a tiny wooden bench and goes to the back of his wobbly galley kingdom. After a while, in the same slo-mo manner, he comes back with a bowl full of rice noodles. The cook floods noodles with an aromatic broth and hands it over to stretched in his direction arms.
Suddenly, a hollow thump sounds out. Struck by an invisible force chef loses his balance and nearly
drops the delicious content of the bowl into waves washing his culinary kingdom. Several angry words
fly towards the woman, whose fruit-filled long and narrow wooden boat hits chef’s floating stall.
Both tourists and traders carefully watch the commotion on the canal of the Damnoen Saduak Floating
Market. Each of them is squeezed into a similar-looking wooden boat, which carries them through
endless waterways of the market. Stalls with almost everything you can think of – clothes, reed hats,
souvenirs, carpets and woven bed covers – coat the canal banks. As if the abundance of goods on the
waterside was not enough, also the channels are busy with floating stalls full of fruits, flowers and
drinks. And rice noodles flooded with aromatic broth.
Damnoen Saduak – market that rocks
Floating market Damnoen Saduak is located about 100km southwest of Bangkok. Its origins date back to
the second half of the nineteenth century when King Rama IV ordered the digging of a canal linking the
Mae Klong and Tha Chin rivers. Residents began to use the channel as a means of water transport and
transportation of goods. Another 200 water threads were created on their initiative, which facilitated
access to further settlements. Trade on the water bloomed until the second half of the 20th century
when roads infrastructure began to supersede the canal network. Water markets started to disappear
one after another. A few years later, however, the Thai government considered the potential of floating
markets as tourist attractions. Damnoen Saduak is a typical example of this. Everything here is done for
tourists. Mini-cruises in long wooden boats through canals (khlongs) covered with souvenir and clothes
stands together with floating fruit stalls, and even mini-restaurants are an effective recipe for tourist
success.
Know before you go
The place is worth visiting to experience the wet shopping spree. Mentally, however, be prepared for
crowds, both on land and in water. Along the embankment, squeezing through the masses of people is
not the most pleasant experience, but getting stuck in a traffic jam in the middle of one of the khlongs is
kind of exciting.
As in every typical tourist attraction, the prices of goods here are massively inflated – something that you
can get for just a few baht, here costs tens of dozens. Haggling is inevitable, even expected by the
vendors.
When the stomach starts to grumble, it is a must to try "boat noodles" – rice noodles, flooded with rich
beef or pork broth full of aromatic herbs and spices. Noodles can be bought at the water-front diners,
but it is advisable to order the dish in one of the booths straight from the boat.
Market rush hours start about 9:00, so it is worthwhile to appear at least one hour earlier.
Consider Dumnoen Saduak Floating Market visit a day trip. It is best to combine it with a visit to a nearby
Maeklong Railway Market.
Damnoen Saduak, Damnoen Saduak District, Ratchaburi 70130, Thailand
Buses departing from the Southern Bus Terminal in Bangkok will take you to the vicinity of the market.
They start to run from 06:00 approximately every 30-40 minutes, and the whole journey will take about
2h.
Another option is a hired car trip – the whole journey will take about 1 – 1.5h depending on the traffic
around Bangkok.
Market opening hours:
Seven days a week from 8:00
One way bus ticket price – about 50THB (Thai Baht) / 1.50USD.
An organised private car trip to both: Maeklong and Damnoen Saduak markets is about 2000THB /
60USD (including boat hire in Damnoen Saduak).
![[English below]
Trzydniowa Japonia w pigułce rozniosła nam głowy. Kilka lat później przeprowadziliśmy się do niej na sześć miesięcy. Kraj przez pół roku konsekwentnie i nieodwracalnie przepalał nam styki. Dlatego nie zdziwiliśmy się wcale, kiedy kilka lat później w Wołgogradzie po meczu Polska-Japonia kibice naszych rywali zabrali się za porządkowanie stadionowych trybun. Co kiedyś mogłoby wywołać uśmiech politowania i wymowny gest posuwisto-zwrotny palcem wskazującym w stronę czoła, dziś było tak oczywiste, że aż trzeba się było dołączyć. Wcale nas nie zdziwiło, że przed stadionem rzesze japońskich fanów gratulowało Polakom tak żarliwie, jakbyśmy wcale nie grali o pietruszkę. Przy tym wszyscy byli tak urzekająco szczęśliwi naszym… hmm… szczęściem, jakby sami właśnie wygrali puchar. Wymianom szalików, koszulek nie było końca. Andrzej wrócił chyba z trzema. W tym jedną vintage z rozgrywek w latach dziewięćdziesiątych ubiegłego wieku. Co prawda juniorska, ale przynajmniej na jedno z nas pasuje.
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Three-day Japan, in a nutshell, blew our minds. A few years later, we moved in there for six months. The country has been consistently and irreversibly frying our brains for half a year. That's why we weren't at all surprised when, a few years later, in Volgograd, after the Poland-Japan match, our rivals' fans started cleaning up the stadium stands. What once might have caused a smile of pity and a back-and-forth gesture with the index finger towards the forehead was now so obvious that we had to join in. We were not at all surprised that in front of the stadium, crowds of Japanese fans congratulated the Poles as passionately as if we were not playing for honour at all. And everyone was so charmingly happy with our… hmm… victory as if they had just won the cup themselves. There was no end to the exchange of scarves and T-shirts. Andrzej came back with at least three, including one vintage from the 1990s. It's a junior size, but it fits at least one of us.](https://www.peryferie.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)