Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

Thailand'S Best Known Floating Market, On Canals Dug In The 1860s · Damnoen Saduak, Ratchaburi

Damnoen Saduak is the floating market on every Thailand poster: women in wide straw hats paddling wooden boats piled with fruit, vegetables and steaming noodle pots along a narrow canal lined with wooden houses. The canal was dug in the 1860s under King Mongkut to link the Mae Klong and Tha Chin rivers, and for a century boats were how the orchard farmers of the area traded. Today, honestly, it is largely a show for visitors: the main market canal is lined with souvenir stalls, tour boats jam the waterways by mid morning and prices are tourist prices. It is still worth seeing if you go early, from about 7 to 9 am, before the tour buses from Bangkok arrive, when the boat vendors, noodle boats and canal-side homes are photogenic and the light is soft. Hire a rowing boat or longtail by the hour after agreeing the price, eat boat noodles and mango sticky rice from the water, and combine the trip with the Maeklong Railway Market and Amphawa nearby. Minivans run from Bangkok's southern terminal in about 1.5 to 2 hours; by early afternoon the market winds down.

Damnoen Saduak Canal, Damnoen Saduak, Damnoen Saduak, Ratchaburi, 70130, Thailand

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the market operates every day of the year from about 6 or 7 am until about noon to 1 pm, at its best from 7 to 9 am and at its most crowded from about 9.30 am to noon; boat piers rent boats from about 7 am to early afternoon; souvenir shops on land may stay open a little later. There is no weekly closing day, but the market is much quieter in the afternoon, with most vendors gone. The Maeklong Railway Market has trains through the stalls only several times a day, and Amphawa's market runs mainly on Friday to Sunday afternoons and evenings. The traps that ruin a day are arriving after 10 am, not agreeing the boat price first, being taken to a distant commission pier and missing the Maeklong train times. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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