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RUSTIC CHARM
Traditional Riverside Markets

All photos © TAT

RUSTIC CHARM
Traditional Riverside Markets

Traditional Thai markets, both the floating kind, where vendors sell their wares from boats, and those that operate on land, have been given a new lease on life in recent years as new generations of visitors, both local and foreign, discover them. The importance of tourists to the existence of the country’s most famous floating market, located at Damnoen Saduak in Ratchaburi province, is easy to see. Visitors are brought there by Thai friends or tour companies, and the waterborne commerce flourishes.

Old-fashioned markets set on land, with their picturesque rows of wooden shophouses, are also coming back to life. Don Wai Market in Nakhon Pathom is especially popular. The reason for its resurgence has less to do with tourism, however, than with its fame as a place to get good things to eat.

There is a stall there that is famous for its ped phalo, or Chinese-style stewed duck, and for the noodle dish made with it. A few years ago people started flocking there on weekends and holidays to enjoy the old-fashioned atmosphere and the duck noodles, which were gaining a reputation as the best in the area.

As the market’s popularity grew, vendors selling other kinds of foods appeared and foodstalls proliferated until the market almost reached bursting point. Today the variety of available dishes is huge. There is even Vietnamese food sent down from I-San (Thailand’s Northeast), and people come from all over to buy their favourites.

Although the reasons these two markets have come back to such active life are different, they have an important thing in common. Both offer a glimpse of what Thai life was in the past, especially local commercial life.

A century ago, Thailand was famous for its canals, a system of waterways that connected to form a spidery network. Paddle boats darted back and forth on the water, and houseboats were moored along the banks. There were large communities of floating homes.

Commerce was conducted using boats. As is true everywhere else in the world, two types of trading were done, wholesale and retail. Retailers made use of medium- to large-sized boats, and most of the traders who used them were Mon or Chinese who lived along riversides in a area that reached from Bangkok to Pathum Thani, Ayutthaya, and Suphan Buri.

These traders would buy milled and unmilled rice, charcoal, and fruit from farmers and villagers and take them to sell in seaside provinces like Phetchaburi, Samut Songkhram, or Chonburi. After selling rice to the local people there, they would buy salt, coconuts and seafood. On the return trip while passing through Bangkok they would stop to buy oil lanterns, digging tools, spades and building equipment, and clothing to sell to farmers.

Stops made for buying or selling of any kind had to take place on scheduled days, when boats would convene busily to form a floating market. Small ones paddled by retailers would come to buy goods from the bigger vessels that they would take to sell in small sub-canals. Places where floating markets met developed over time into trade centres where food, rice, and utensils were available from houseboats that had been converted into shops.

In very small and remote canals floating markets of another type would operate, with vendors selling goods of different kinds at retail prices. Some would sell fruit, others rice, farming tools or fishing equipment. Others would paddle about offering noodles or coffee. Again, these markets were held on scheduled days so that two competing markets would not be held at the same time.

Markets held on land may originally have been floating markets, but as the communities surrounding them grew and their sites became centres for trade and travel, shops that previously operated in houseboats moved onto the shore to occupy rows of wooden shophouses. Each of these shops ran a business of its own. There were tailors, barbers, pharmacies, bookshops, gold shops and coffee shops. There would be shops that specialized in different kinds of tools and building equipment.

Some of the larger land markets also served as landings for passenger boats. They were located near rice mills and municipal offices as well as shrines and Chinese opera theatres. As they grew they became regional centres where visitors from the countryside could take care of business and purchase whatever they needed.

What was it that reduced the importance of these markets, which once were such an important part of Thai life? The cause was the advent of an efficient system of roadways. As travelling and trading moved off the water and onto trucks travelling by road, the significance of the waterways diminished until there were virtually no floating markets left at all. Markets set on the banks of rivers and canals began to shrink and deteriorate as the shops moved from the riverside to the roadside. Eventually the only people left were elderly shopkeepers and those who didn’t have enough money to move.

Then, gradually, they started to revive. The floating market at Damnoen Saduak made an especially strong comeback. Originally it was one of the smaller ones where retail selling was done from boats. But when the tourism industry initiated a project to show visitors how Thais traded in the past, they saw the potential of the Damnoen Saduak market as a living example. They promoted and enlarged it, putting up roofs and building stairways leading down to the water. Vendors were invited to sell there, and when tourists began showing up every day to buy, it became a permanent floating market.

Land markets like Talaad Don Wai were brought back to life by the Thai passion for seeking out good things to eat. But people who went there were looking not only for tasty dishes, but also the atmosphere of the past that fills these old wooden markets. Some visitors may have been born in time to have seen traditional markets like Don Wai in other parts of the country. To see this one was to revive old and happy memories. Others, who had never seen an old market, fell under its spell. Therefore, one of the features that draws visitors to Talaad Don Wai is an atmosphere of times gone by that is hard to find now. It appeals to Thai tourists, who go there in large numbers. Cash flows in so abundantly that the market is swimming in it.

Other withering land markets have noted the example of Talaad Don Wai and are experiencing resurgences of their own. There is the Lamphaya river-side market at Amphoe Bang Lane, Nakhon Pathom, for example. Its selling point is its location on the bank of the Nakhon Chaisri River. Many things to eat are available there, including fruit freshly harvested from nearby orchards. During weekends it is full of Thai tourists.

Among the other markets that have come back to life is Talaad Khlong Suan on the bank of Khlong Prawate-Burirom, in the district that connects Samut Prakan and Chachoengsao provinces. It has been in operation for more than a hundred years, and is unusual in that it is still fully functional. Shopowners do business and there is plenty of activity with customers buying old-fashioned goods that are rarely seen in more modern markets. Excellent noodles and traditional sweets are sold there. These features exert a powerful attraction that draws Thai tourists, and today the old market is flourishing.

Another century-old market at Baan Mai in Chachoengsao province has looked forlorn for many years, but now the province is developing it, too, as a tourism site. The market next to the pier at Amphoe Amphawa on the bank of the Ta Chine River is also finding a new clientele of tourists who enjoy luxuriating in the cool breeze that blows there in the evening and the feeling of traditional Thai riverside living.

These are a few of the floating and land-based Thai markets, once seemingly moribund, that have found new life as tourists have discovered their special charm. They open a window on an aspect of the past that was central to Thailand’s traditional culture.