Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

We left Bangkok early morning.  A private driver was hired for the 3 hr trip to Hua Hin.  The city part of the vacation was over and now it was time to head to the beaches.  En route to Hua Hin we would be stopping at the famous Damnoen Saduak floating market about 2 hours outside of Bangkok.  Basically, its a bunch of canals in a jungle setting with people living densely along both sides of the narrow waterways.

Besides providing transportation, the canal provides farmers with irrigation for their crops.  If I were to to catch yellow fever or malaria it would be here.  You ride in long thin boats (canoes) and drive around to various vendors hawking whatever food or goods they have (this is where I actually bought the items I abandoned in the Hong Kong night market).  We were in a private boat with an outboard (there are boats where the driver paddles).  Our driver guided us through the various canals stopping at shops, temples, whatever you wanted to see.  You could purchase things without ever leaving you boat.
                
                         
The water was very murky and I remembered reading it was the fresh waterways that you had to be concerned with in Thailand along with a stern warning of not to swim in them (like I ever would).

My travel companion and I are taking in the sites and she decides she wants some fresh pineapple.  The boat selling fresh fruit comes by and we stop the vendor.  She has fruit already cut and bagged but we don't want that we want her to cut the fruit in front of us so we are sure of what we are getting.  Of course she's annoyed but obliges using this large machete type knife to strip away the thick skin of the pineapple.   She hands it over we pay and off we go digging into our fresh fruit, yum.  Then I decide to turn around to take a picture, that's when I watch her dip the knife in the canal and wipe the sticky pineapple remnants off on her skirt: wonderful.

                                             

Not only fruits and nuts were sold from these boats buts meats as well.  The set ups these people had were ingenious.

                                       

However, I was very observant going forward, I would see things being throw in the river and wondered what lurked below that consumed these scraps...didn't take long to find out.

At one point the driver had to do a 3 point turn to have us head back to our starting position.  As he was carefully maneuvering the boat in the tight canal I looked ahead and saw something rather large trying to crawl out of the water.



My travel companion was happily sitting in front of me looking at whatever captured her fancy and I'm still seeing this "thing" I can't identify trying to make its way onto a dock directly ahead of me.  At this point the driver nor my companion see this "thing" and I need to make an important decision quick.  If  I tell my companion about the creature she is going to scream and possibly upset the boat (she's excitable to say the least AND since the "thing" came from the water, that would be the last place I want to end up), if I don't tell her about it and she discovers it on her own no telling if the boat will be overturned. I decide to tell her, but I turn her toward me and start gently by saying "There is something I'd like you to see"  of course now I notice this thing has a blue forked tongue and is about 5 ft long and our boat is drifting closer and I don't know if it jumps and I have to make sure the driver sees and OMG, I so want to be out of here.  So my companion starts getting jittery, looking around saying "What?" "What?" and I say you must stay calm and I show her the monster, she screams (on cue) but we don't end up in the water, I manage a photo and we STILL have no idea what it is because the driver who now sees it can't tell us in anything we understand so he quickly pulls away. Of course we see about 5 more of these lizard type dragons on the way back to the docking station (no where near as large) and I'm done I want to be in the car and outta here.  Back in the car with our driver we try to explain what we saw, while he speaks English its not enough for him to understand and finally he gives us a Thai/English dictionary and we look up "dragon", show him the word in English with the Thai word next to it and he says "ah, monitor lizard".  The driver then stopped at the side of a road where ladies were selling coconuts and he bought us two coconuts, the women used their machetes to trim them up and place in a straw. After that experience I guess we looked like we could use a drink.