We started out early, driving south east of Bangkok, heading for the famous Damnoen Saduak floating market but on the way saw some additional neat sites. The first was a salt flat with workers shoveling up and moving the dried salt from the flats to a nearby pile, ready to be bagged.
It was a pretty manual job, in intense heat, but the men worked hard and in fact, RAN up a small board ramp with their wheelbarrows filled. It takes about 2 weeks for the salt to dry in the flat. This is coarse sea salt and once bagged it is sent for "cleaning" before sometimes adding iodine and then sold.
Our next brief stop was at a coconut oil production spot. Instead of the usual coconuts being cut and sold for their milky juice inside, workers cut the seed fronds down from the tree, put them in a narrow bamboo tubing and worked to squeeze out the seed juice. This is then boiled for 2-4 hours and caramelized. The hot syrup is cooled and turned into a brown sugar of sorts which is only used in cooking. For the tourist trade they were also making little patties of hot sugar to try, and buy. The whole process resembled, almost identically, that of maple sugaring off done at home. We tried some hot sugar (and it was HOT) but didn't buy any more. The locals also created coconut oil from this process and had some lovely scented and moisture rich products to sell.
After this stop it was on to Damnoen and a trip in yet another boat! This time a "speed" boat, local style! It was similar to a dugout and we sat on the floor. The driver controlled the outboard motor and went quickly down the canals creating large wakes to roll the boat! But he also slowed down at all the tight intersections and if there was anything good to take pictures of. This was really fun and we all really enjoyed it!
We ended up at the floating market and were able to see how folks could buy just about anything from the boats. Tourism has infiltrated here and although the locals still buy food (fast food) and some goods for their own use, many of the boats were selling more touristy souvenirs. We moved on to another section of the market and there we saw far more foods being cooked and served from the boat. Things like fried bananas, rice and meat or fish, donuts, fish and so on. Along the side of the tow path, there were more stalls with goods for sale and we enjoyed bargaining down the price with the vendors.
From here we went to another handicraft workshop and sales area, this time for carved wood. The talent and care taken here was amazing. The artisans were chiseling out intricate designs on wood and creating some extremely beautiful reliefs on tables, chairs, wall murals and more. In the shop there were some fabulous pieces of furniture and some lovely polished home furnishings - if only our suitcases were bigger! Here is just one sample of the carving - there are some many more!
Although lots more in the day to share, the final highlight I want to show you was our experience with some Thai elephants. We saw a show demonstrating how the elephants work for the farmers and a folklore show at this next stop, but the piece de resistance was the ride on the elephants. The first elephant was trained for tourist pictures and crossed his leg in a nonchalant manner. He was quite tame and enjoyed being petted - even more so if we had had some fruit to give him. He was only 19 years old but his skin was dry, leathery and hairy!
The other fella was older and somewhat bigger. He was fun to ride, if only for a short time, and enough to know that I wouldn't want to go too far on an elephant! It would not have been a long lasting comfortable ride!
All for now - convention starts in earnest tomorrow. Today was busy but tomorrow we go early in order to go through security. We have the Thai Royal Princess speaking at our opening! Love these special treats we get!
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