Travel Notes from Dumnoen Saduak Floating Market Thailand
Over the course of three days in Thailand, we visited three different floating markets. In one, the market sellers were floating in boats and you shopped by walking by on the land or the dock. In another, we sat in the boat and the market stalls were set up on the sides of the canal. And at Dumnoen Saduak floating market, there was a bit of both.
When we arrived, someone quickly came up to us and offered us the choice of one or two hours in a boat, and it turned out an hour was plenty of time to see everything since we were there quite early in the morning and the canal didn’t start to get busy until we were getting back on our feet. We just sat in the canoe and our guide rowed, taking us from one section of the market to another.

There are a few things that are universal as far as we have always found: Coca-Cola is certainly one of them. (So far other contenders include Pepsi, Starbucks and KFC which seems to be exceedingly popular in Thailand. There is also many a Tesco shop!) Also, I love this lady’s hat. I have a feeling she has a brilliant character.
Here’s a short little video of the market so you can get a feel for the atmosphere of this place. Think calm and peaceful interrupted by moments of intense sales pitch! Although we don’t know for sure, we assumed our guide either had friends or colleagues that made it worth her while to take us to certain stands, as sometimes she really didn’t want to push away until we bought something, but others she would totally ignore. Admittedly, we have been slightly infuriating to many a market person as we have packed so lightly that we aren’t really buying much in the way of souvenirs. I have mostly been looking for postcards but they have been dire and far between. I wish I had picked up more on our very first day as we’ve never seen a proper rack of postcards like that since. Hoping some will pop up on our radar soon!

Some of the markets we have visited are quite small, but you can see this one covers a fair bit of space. Admittedly many of the shops are empty – it looks like they haven’t always been, so I think this may be exactly like the empty shops on our high streets back home. This market is mostly aimed at tourists and fewer people travel right now, so that affects businesses like this too. If you do go here and have room in your bags, you can get things to take home for mere pennies. It’s way more fun than shopping at the airport for a shot glass and a keychain with the name of the destination.
Things were picking up as it grew closer to lunchtime. I can imagine at its busiest, it’s quite difficult to navigate the boat through everything! But here you can see how there are both shoppers and sellers in boats, plus more along the side on the bank. The colours are amazing – all the bright primary shades against the neutrals of the water.

There is one thing we do buy at markets because we don’t have to find room for it in our backpacks: food! This lady made fried bananas – some with sesame seeds and some with coconut flakes. We watched her make them and then she scooped them up to us in a bowl attached to a stick, so we could take them and pass the money back to her even though she was in the water and we were on a bridge. They were seriously yummy and the bag had more than the two of us could eat – for a whopping price that worked out to… forty pence. Thai food… of course it is seriously amazing, but it’s amazing at every level from a boat to a fancy restaurant. But there’s at least a full blog post in that idea. More soon.
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