2 Tourists, 1 Toyota Commuter

The Van

If you've ever been outside of the United States and Canada, you've seen one of these:

It's a Toyota Commuter Van. Like a Tijuanan hooker, while it serves a legitimate purpose, you don't want to spend too much time in one. Only tourists, masochists, and their friendly guides/drivers/dominators would ever submit themselves to spending an entire day bouncing around in  the back of one, knees by your ears, ass hurting, feet and forehead sweating, all the while cursing the operator who sold you the trip. How did we end up in one you ask? Well, we're tourists (maybe closet masochists?). Allow me to explain.

(Actually, the Toyota Commuter Van is quite sweet. The seats are comfortable enough and recline individually, the AC blows nice and strong, they have zippy manually transmissions, and the ones here in Thailand all seem to run on compressed natural gas. In fact, I spent a good portion of our trip thinking about why we don't have these things in the US!)

The Why

One of the main attractions around Bangkok are the floating markets. Bangkok and much of central Thailand is crisscrossed by canals, or khlongs in Thai, so much so that the area is commonly referred to as the Venice of the East. Presumably Thai people, back in the day, used to do their daily shopping along these canals from merchants floating round on long slender wooden canoes. These days, since many of the canals have been paved over and replaced with streets, most Thais do their shopping in markets on more solid ground (or at the local air conditioned 711 or Tesco).

Another popular and controversial attraction is the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, also simply known as the Tiger Temple. This is a Buddhist forest temple and sanctuary for wild animals outside of Kanchanaburi in Western Thailand, about 3 hours drive from Bangkok. This place is famous for allowing visitors to interact up close and personal with tigers of all ages and sizes, not something you normally get to do in the mean streets of Chicago. Although we much prefer to see real animals in the real wilderness, we also understand the pragmatic purpose that zoos and other conservation efforts serve.

And so, while we suspected that both destinations will be largely over run by our white skinned brethren, both sounded unique and exciting, and we wanted to check them out. To that end, on Monday night we booked a trip to both, plus a stop at Kanchanaburi along the way to see the WWII museum and railroad bridge over the River Kwai, which is part of the Death Railway built by forced laborers held captive by the Japanese during WWII. 

The Trip

The Toyota Commuter picked us up from our hotel at 7AM sharp as planned, arriving at the Damnoen Saduak floating market about 2 hours later. As we suspected, the place was largely a tourist trap, but an interesting one nonetheless, one that lets go of your lower leg without leaving any serious injuries.

Some of these wooden canoes had what looked to be simply car engines mounted to the back of the wooden boats, complete with transmission and a near-horizontal drive shaft for powering through the shallow water. This is Thai engineering at its finest, surpassing even the best Polish engineering I've encountered.

The food, needless to say, was delicious ...

... as were the pythons.

After a few hours, we hopped back into the Toyota Commuter and headed towards the Tiger Temple, stopping in Kanchanaburi. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to see the museum. I'm curious about the history between Japan and Thailand. 

In a haste, we left for the Tiger Temple, driving over 100 kmh (nearly 2 times the speed limit), and turning the 2 lane road into a 3 or even 4 lane one in an effort to pass slower moving cars. Upon arriving, we realized why - it was 2:45, and the place closes at 3:15, barely making the 600BHT/20USD worth it. Keeping the pace set by our masked driver ... 

... we bought our tickets in a rush and jogged towards the Tiger "Canyon" (it looked more like an old quarry), passing slower-moving tourists along the way. We get there and, like in Disney Land, we get in line for the obligatory photo ops with the large cats.

Closing time quickly came upon us, and on our way out, we came across some wet and horny homosexual bovine, and a goat with a need for a mastectomy.

The Conclusion

If we were to do it all again, we would not do the 3 in one tour again. instead, we would visit these destinations more independently, and give ourselves more time to do it. Specifically:

• Instead of Damnoen Saduak floating market, we would try to visit something a bit more authentic. There must be some real floating market frequented by real Thais in some long forgotten corner of Thailand. We might just make it our mission to find it ...
• We would take a bus to Kanchanaburi and stay the night there, giving us time to more adequately explore the area (there are waterfalls in the surrounding hills), and allowing us to go to the Tiger Temple first thing in the morning in order to have a chance to interact more with the cubs, and be there before the rest of the tourists come.

The Rest of the Photos

As always, check out the complete photo gallery of this leg of our trip in our photo gallery.