A*M*P*H*A*W*A

About an hour outside of Bangkok there is a town called Amphawa that has the most fantastic floating market. This market is a bit off the beaten path for western tourist, but it is very popular with Thais and is well worth the trip. The other weekend about six of us piled into our friend Pom's SUV and decided to make the journey. We were not only in search of the floating market, but also in search of the sea monkeys we heard resided in the area.

At the market we were among very few other foreigners, but lots of other Thai tourist. The market itself was like a huge boardwalk on both sides of the canal. It had shops on the main land lining the water and floating food vendors selling everything from pad Thai, bamboo shoots, thai icetea, soups, scallops, squid, fish, and the largest river prawns I think I've ever seen.

After about an hour or two of wondering around the shops and eating ourselves sick we finally found a boat/tour guide that would take us to see these imfamous sea monkeys.

It was actually rather difficult to find a driver to take us because it was so far which made us a bit nervous we weren't going to see the monkeys! Well thank goodness for Pom and her persistance (not to mention her ability to speak Thai). The driver as we suspected brought us somewhere and basically said "oh guess there are no monkeys today". Pom, not willing to take no for answer, started flagging down other boaters/locals and asking them where we could find the monkeys and sure enough she found us the monkeys. We didn't exactly get to see any of them swim, but we did see them walk into the water to grab the food we threw. They really are such interesting little creatures. We would throw a piece of food on the sand and they would pick it up and go rinse it off in water before they ate it. Who knew monkeys cared so much about a little sand on their food?

Once we arrived back at the market we did a bit more shopping and eating...icecream with sticky rice, stuffed crab, rose apples, little shrimp cakes, fried chicken, and the list goes on. We topped the day off with Leos all around at a canal side bar.

Overall it was a fantastic day with great friends!

Xoxo,
Nichole, Jenny, and Christy