Here are a couple of my favourite pics from the floating Market we visited. We had a lovely 'driver' for our boat who after asking if we were interested in visiting the many tourist nicknak stalls and recieved a resounding no took us on a tour of the residential waterways of his town. He told us that most of the people there did not own a car but everyone owned a boat, nice. For an account of our trip upto Cambodia and Angkor Wat I would refer you too Kelly's BLOG. The link is on the side bar (right hand side) of my BLOG. Her latest two blogs cover the first half of our trip. I will get round to writing but to be honest I haven't even finished my journal writing on the trip!
Just as a side note: the floating (and terrestrial) markets still serve a functional role in traditional Thai society however they are also becoming increasingly affected by tourism. If we had more time we could have sought out a wholly traditional market (catering only to Thais) however time was off the essence (these markets happen according to a lunar calender) and we had to go to a well known market in close proximity to Bangkok. We avoided the touristic side of things as much as possible by not taking a tour. We took a local bus to the town nearby where we stayed in that town sole hotel (a bit of a cold dreary hotel but clean and functional) before getting up early the following day to see the market. The town is about 2 hours from Bangkok and the tours leaving that morning arrive en mass at 9am, and from then on tourists outnumber Thais. We managed to have a couple of hours of peace before the hoards descended, upon which time we made our leave. I believe later that day we chose a tailor, got fitted for suits and then saw Thai Boxing in the evening. I will write up a full and comprehensive account later...sometime....