My sister liked the cars, but I think she enjoyed the colorful dumplings more.
They crashed pretty early, but I think it was a good first day outing.
On Saturday, we piled into a van with a driver and went to Sampran Riverside which is a park about 45 minutes away. It's known for its roses and its Thai cultural classes and show. There are also several restaurants and a hotel you can stay at. We had rooms at the hotel. On the way there, we made a slight detour to see the Phra Pathom Chedi, which is supposedly the tallest chedi in the world. It was definitely big.
And it had a really nice courtyard with Buddha statues.
It was a bit off the beaten tourist path, but it was a nice stop.
We go to Sampran Riverside in time for lunch, which we ate looking out over the river. After lunch, we went to the Thai cultural show, which was basically a mash up of traditional Thai things. There was Thai music, dancing, boxing (Muay Thai), a wedding ceremony, stick and sword fighting, and more dancing.
The dancing at the end was the best, because they used bamboo sticks for percussion, and then the dancers jumped between the sticks. It was the scary version of double dutch.
After the cultural show, we saw some elephant dancing.
Then we had quiet hang out time until dinner. It was so lovely outside, that we tried to sit next to the water for dinner.
We didn't last very long though, because the bugs were out in force, so we retreated to indoor dining.
After dinner, we found a pool table, and Judy and Jeff played a round of pool, while Vivian hopped around the table excitedly.
The next morning we packed ourselves back up and got in the van to head to the floating market at Damnoen Saduak. Our driver took us to a boat rental place a bit down the river, and the six of us piled into one of the long tail boats. The first part of the ride was through a fairly wide canal that looked like the water equivalent of a residential neighborhood.
The weather was perfect, so everyone enjoyed the first part of the ride. Then we came to a coconut sugar stall where the driver let us off for a quick taste.
It was kind of salty, sweet. The rest of the stall was souvenirs at three times the price you would pay if you knew where to shop in Bangkok. That was my first indication that this was a complete tourist trap.
When we got closer to the market area, there were a few floating vendors, mostly for food.
But most of the market was souvenir stalls set up along the river that we floated by on our boat. The vendors had long hooks, and if you showed an interest in what they were selling, they would hook you towards them.
It turned out that our boat driver was actually selling things himself, the flower chains that people use to bless their houses, cars, etc. We had one at the front of our boat.
So even though we didn't want to buy anything, we moved pretty slowly while he stopped to sell his flowers. Eventually we got to the main part, which was like a Bangkok traffic jam, but with boats instead of cars.
It was an interesting experience, but we all agreed that our favorite part was the boat ride through the residential canals. On the way back, we stopped to feed some fish near a wat, and we had a lot of fun throwing in the food and watching them all splash around for it. It wasn't what I had expected, but I'm glad we did it.
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