Bangkok is criss-crossed with canals, which is why it has been (dubiously) dubbed the ‘Venice of the East’. The canals have been used for many years as another means of transport around the city, which gives a welcome break to taxis or tuk-tuks. We did not get in a gondola for our tour, but a longtail boat, which is a really long, skinny boat with a simple engine, engineered to skim across the wakes of other boats along the very busy Chao Phraya river. We had chartered this boat for 800baht, which is fairly expensive, but there are organised trips, or you could get together with a group of people to split the cost.
We zipped down the river for a few minutes before turning into one of the canals, and I quickly became jealous of the people that had waterfront homes. Some of the houses were made of wood and balanced on posts (which made me wonder what happens when one of the posts begins to rot), and others were made of concrete and looked a bit more stable.
As we turned into narrower and narrower canals, we started to notice that the houses had mail boxes on the canal side of their homes- the postman comes by boat!- and some had small boats outside, and many had beautiful seating areas with many well watered plants decorating the outside. We also noticed that street vendors had adapted, and were paddling the canals selling their wares- from food to brooms and (of course) souvenirs. Once the vendors had someone interested, the person buying would put some money into a bucket, attached to a pulley system, the vendor would swap the money for the item and send the bucket back. The ultimate shopping experience!
We even passed through a lock, though I couldn’t work out how the water level a few miles downstream of the main river could be higher than where we started off. It was quite fun squeezing 8 boats into the small space, and all banging together while the boat drivers caught up on gossip as the water levels changed.
If you get given the option of ‘feeding fish’- take it, it looks great fun. I passed up on the opportunity as I wasn’t sure how much extra it would end up costing and what unsavoury delicacies we might end up feeding them, but I really regret it. Most of the temples on the waterfront sell ‘blessed bread’ to feed to huge catfish, which gather by the dozens and wrestle the bread off each other, some of the catfish even stick their entire heads out of the water to take the bread from your hand. They really are blessed fish, with boatloads of people feeding them loaves of bread every few minutes.
We didn’t go for the option of going to the snake farm or the floating market, having heard that they got pretty busy with tourists, but the boat drivers can arrange all sorts of tours, including going to Wat Arun, the Grand Palace and the royal barge museum.
Again, this trip was a first for me, and watching the world go by at a snails pace and getting kids waving from their gardens was a very welcome change of pace. A definite must.
A Penny For Them 