Floating Market, Bangkok

Last day of our month-long holiday; last chance to pack in some extra sights. We spent the morning travelling to another couple of temples via tuk tuk- firstly the temple of "The Lucky Buddha" (you couldn't make that up) and then the Marble Temple. We got talking to a friendly Thai man at the first temple. From what we could decipher, he works at the on-site school as a teacher (and probably was just using us to test out his English!). He was telling us how the kids got free education there if their parents were street cleaners. Our tuk tuk driver was also really talkative and was telling us what it was like to be a tuk tuk driver in Bangkok (for the record- he likes it, but doesn't get enough holiday... Maybe working in Bangkok isn't as different from working in the UK as it seems, hehe.)

In the afternoon we hired a long-boat speed boat (with driver) for a couple of hours. The speed this thing went down the river was crazy. The advantage of the boat being so narrow is that it was able to go down the canal off-shoots of the river. The canals are basically used as back-street roads. For miles and miles, winding round this way and that, the canal is lined either side with wooden houses on stilts. Seeing the Thai people going about their every day lives was fascinating- especially seeing it from the perspective of the boat! People cooking, cleaning etc, and always happy to wave back to us from their houses.

A "Thai Supermarket" also approached us whilst we were on the boat- basically a little Thai woman in her rowing boat, who moored on the side of our boat, offering to sell us beers from the esky box she had on board. Who were we to refuse? We paid a premium Thai price of 100baht per beer (about 2 quid- this is expensive for Thailand!) but my god, it was possibly the best beer I've had in my entire life.

Now, to the photo. The photo was taken at the floating market, which is deep in the canal system. The idea, basically, is a market on the water which has a load of spaces for little rowing boats to moor at, and for people to trade from the boats themselves. I've never seen anything like it. We had half an hour to walk around. The majority of the boat-stalls were food sellers. They had mini-bbq's on board their boats, to turn the boats in to portable kitchens. Ryan and I bought 4 of the kingliest king prawns I've ever seen. They were huge. We watched them being plucked straight off the BBQ coals for us, and we ate the right away. Absolutely delicious.

Later on in the evening, we returned to a night market we were at a couple of evenings ago. We had the last supper there, made some last minute purchases with left-over baht, got back to the hotel to freshen up, and had to head to the airport at about 10.30pm. Truly made the most of every minute of our last day.