Floating Market, Bats, Caves, and Monkeys

Sunday, 24 October 2004

This morning, Jun's family picked me up at 7:30 am to head to Damnoen Saduak, the popular Floating Market about an hour's drive away from Nakhon Pathom. It definitely is a tourist destination, with expensive souvenir stands and other products, including Louis Vuitton handbags and Thai Buddha statues, photo albums, and hats....All sold from vendors paddling by you on the river. We paid 300 baht for the four of us to get our own boat and have the driver ("paddler"?) paddle us around the river, looking at the various stands, getting stuck in a boat traffic jam, and eating delicious Thai noodles and fruit.

We then went to the Champoen Cave in Ratchaburi province. When you come into the parking lot, there are wild monkeys everywhere, climbing the trees, roaming the streets, and being fed by locals. We joined in the fun and bought corn to feed the monkeys. We hiked down into the cave, full of awesome natural sculptures, and smelly bats, that were (thank goodness) sleeping. Supposedly, at 6 pm, you can see all the bats fly out of the cave. I passed on that one. Their squeaking alone was enough to freak me out. The amazing part of the cave was at the end, where there was a large Buddha statue lying down. People paid their respects by praying and gluing their pieces of gold paper to the statue. When you looked up, a few holes in the ceiling allowed the sunlight to shine through.