Amphawa Floating Market

The Amphawa Floating Market is about 70 Km southeast of Bangkok, and it's one of the few floating markets in the area that starts late in the morning, and continues throughout the afternoon and into the evening. It's also smaller than many of the other markets, and most of the visitors seemed to be either Thai, Philippino or Chinese. I thought I'd seen a lot of strange food on display in Bangkok, but I could hardly recognise anything being served from the boats along the canal. I made the mistake of assuming that the chili powder here is of a universal strength, and what I added to my soup was actually strong enough to contract my vocal chords so much that I was talking to my friend in something between a cough and a whisper for a good five minutes after eating. It was delicious nonetheless, as were the baked river clams we ate afterwards. The candied crabs I bought out of sheer perversity, but they turned out be very tasty. If you hold them by the claws you can bite into the crunchy, sweet, sticky bodies without cracking your teeth...

I wasn't brave enough to try the horseshoe crabs. The grey-brown flesh and speckled yellow roe looked too frightening, as well as the fact that Anna said they tasted a bit like mud. We just wandered around for a while, crunching candied crabs, eating pork and lime-leaf dumplings, drinking frozen strawberry smoothies, until we were fit to burst. A karaoke machine had been set up on the side of the canal, and a Thai woman on the bridge just stood there melting while she listened to one particularly impressive singer belt out what could only be a love song. The quality of the singing was, however, variable. It was pretty hard not to laugh out loud while we sat and had a beer for the road. On the way out, I asked for the toilet, and I really wasn't sure whether the lady had understood what I was looking for. Tucked behind a very thin screen was the weirdest-looking urinal I've ever seen. I had visions of the woman walking round the corner to be confronted with the horrible vision of a farang pissing into her prized custom-made sink...