Last weekend, we drove to Amphawa, a district located in Samut Songkhram, a small province only 72 km. south of Bangkok. It is a small village where you will experience a floating market featuring a wide variety of food such as Thai papaya pok-pok (Thai spicy salad) and traditional Thai desserts as well as seasonal tropical fruits and fresh vegetables. In addition, there are a variety of Thai handmade products on sale. At night, a well-known activity here that is a MUST is a boat trip to see fireflies. We arrived the ‘Amphawa’ floating market around 3:00PM; for those who have been to Damnern Saduak Floating market, this place is much different from what you can imagine. Open from 4 to 7 p.m. every Friday to Sunday or on public holidays, you will see not as many boat vendors on the scene but Amphawa is considerably more authentic than Damnern Saduak.

I ordered ‘Phad Thai’ from the boat noodles vendor and ate my meal on shore, which is well equipped with tables. Then we walked along the riverbank where there are a few coffee shops by the canal as well as gift shops selling postcards. Stopping at a foot massage stall, we rested up until it was a dark - about 7:00PM - at which time our firefly watching adventure would start.

We hired a boat that could accommodate 5-6 people for 2 hours of firefly watching at 150 Baht each. Through the darkness, we saw loads of tiny living insect with golden bodies moving back and forth!! It is as if we had twinkling golden little stars close at hand. My niece referred to this memorable scene as Asian Christmas Trees.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 9:18 am and is filed under Thailand, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.