Shopping with the risk of getting wet

Pattaya Floating Market: Shopping on the open sea (or rather, the canals) and ice cream from a wobbly boat

Forget about coin-operated trolleys, neat aisles and supermarket-style fluorescent lighting. The Pattaya Floating Market is a place where you go shopping with your sense of balance ready for a challenge! Imagine a bustling Asian bazaar that someone has simply picked up and plonked into a river. Instead of pavements, there’s a network of murky, brown canals, and instead of traditional stalls – dozens of wooden boats, each one a separate, floating business.

Ice cream with the risk of a swim

The best way to explore this place? Jump into a hired wooden boat steered by a local and let the current carry you along. The very process of buying anything from the water is an absolute farce and a test of dexterity. The sun is beating down mercilessly, you’re drifting along slowly, and suddenly, round a bend, another little boat pulls up alongside you, from which a smiling vendor serves up… delicious, refreshing ice cream! The water-based logistics begin. You reach out for your dessert, your rower has just decided to manoeuvre round another boat, and you slowly start drifting apart. The final stage of the transaction goes like this: both boats try to manoeuvre back towards each other; you almost lean over the side to grab the ice cream melting in the sun, whilst you pass the cash in baht to each other mid-air above the water’s surface. One false move and the coins end up at the bottom, contributing to the local fish pension fund! But the taste of that ice cream, eaten on a rocking plank right in the middle of the watery hustle and bustle – absolute poetry and the ultimate refreshment.

MasterChef on a nut shell

But what really blows you away at the floating market is the local cuisine. Thai women in their distinctive, wide straw hats manage to fit the following onto a two-metre-long, rocking little boat: a gas cylinder, a burner, a wok full of hot oil, half a day’s worth of ingredients – and still manage to smile broadly whilst doing it! You’re afraid to even sneeze for fear of capsizing the boat, yet they’re totally at ease, frying spring rolls and stirring up hot Pad Thai, handing you a steaming bowl straight into your hands. A level of skill they don’t teach on any survival courses.

Here’s a fun fact to impress your friends with:

This floating market isn’t just a random collection of boats. The whole complex has been cleverly divided into four main zones. Each one represents a different part of Thailand – the North, the North-East, the Centre and the South. They differ in the style of goods on sale, the architecture of the wooden pavilions on stilts, and, above all, the food. In practice, this means that in a single afternoon, without stepping off your boat, you can take a culinary ‘tour’ of the whole country!