Tourist Traps or Cultural Heritage? A Road Trip Through (Rebuilt) History

it's one of the most frequent Stories We Tell on this channel the old days on the water and bangkok's iconic and historic canals the root of Thai food where so much of modern Cuisine was first sold from boat to boat so many years ago now today's Bangkok might be a modern and industrial city but there are still places to catch a glimpse of the old life with a weekend road trip to tour Thailand's famous floating markets these are how would you say this [Music] bullet is the wrong word I'm a tourist trap uh not entirely real we're going on a path where few have gone before that's not true where everybody's gone before today here on OTR we're exploring the roots of Thailand's famous floating markets and trying to find out not just how this ancient culture influenced the local food scene but how it's turned into an amusement park and whether somewhere somehow there's still foods served that'll make us feel like we've gone back in time now today we're spending our time in an area famous for floating markets the ones you're most likely to visit when you come to Thailand are built along canals that date back to 1868 when they were completed after three years of construction in a project that would bring life and prosperity Agriculture and commerce to the provinces west of Bangkok but these markets they don't date back to 1868 at all in fact only one still standing has a history as far back as 1968. we've spent plenty of time on this channel explaining how the industrialization under King Rama V led to the construction of roads and structures and Society moving Inland but the change from Raton houses to skyscrapers didn't happen all at once in fact there were still parts of Bangkok living an ancient Lifestyle by the time the first Western tourists started partying in the city's Go-Go bars and watching fights at the Muay Thai Stadium on the tonbury side of the chaopraya river one of the last parts of town still undeveloped around those years was near a temple called watsai where every few days the villagers would gather on their sound ponds and buy and sell food and produce now this caught the attention of tourists and in turn travel agents who organized groups for foreigners to get there by boat and take photographs of one of the most unique sites in the entire world now roads in progress came to Watson and in 1965 that original Market disappeared but its surprise popularity had caught the attention of the Thai government and just a few months after the old markets had all gone extinct plans were made to build a new one this time intended for tourists they settled on a small village of wooden houses along a canal called the Domin and it would open in 1966. by 1972 the new market had outgrown the village and moved to open land a few hundred meters away along with a dedicated New Road straight from Bangkok and that's the road where we're driving on our way to start our mission at the world's most famous floating Market foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] there's no denying the popularity of the dominak floating Market it's one of the most photogenic sites in the country and somewhere you've probably seen in YouTube videos and Instagram posts even if you've never been here before but it's worth pointing out that this doesn't look like any floating Market a time traveling 19th century bangkokian might recognize in fact the name floating Market is kind of a mistranslation in Thai these places are simply called taladnam which means water market and in the old days that could just as easily mean a market built on land but accessible from a pier where customers would ride up in their boats to buy what they need there were places like this where both buyers and sellers were on the water but not in any kind of permanent way it was more like every couple of weeks each Village might have a set time when farmers and Traders would arrive from the countryside with their goods and locals would paddle out to shop and then a few hours later the canal would just be a canal again this kind of nine-to-five organized chaos well I mean that started right here so here's the danger we stopped the boat for a minute to eat and to look at what's around us and now we are getting just obliterated by vendors I have been offered everything at this Market in about the last one minute saute coconuts coconut ice cream mangoes mango sticky rice the crispy pork saute is right there I'm pretty sure if we just sat in this one place it would end up being like vultures picking my dead body apart it's been a really nice boat ride but the key on the water here is keep moving it's like a shark shark stop swimming the Shark dies don't stop swimming [Music] I want her to show us what she would eat when she comes here [Music] but that's Foreigner food that's what foreigners eat right we want to show you know what is every Foreigner comes here and they think that uh the food that's meant for tourists is authentic Thai food but authentic Thai food is so much America [Music] we have a few more destinations and I won't waste a lot of time on the food here because the food was exactly what you'd think it would be crowd-pleasing Specialties with no real connection to the history of the great canals and made in such massive volumes that even the best stuff is put together with all the care of a fast food hamburger the sad reason for that disappointment is also the reason we're optimistic about our other destinations and we'll explain that part later but the very quick story is that after this place opened and tourists started coming a Thai Chinese businessman from the capital known by the name guate saw an opportunity and began Hawking Trinkets and mass-produced souvenirs his approach proved successful and to avoid fighting with locals selling their own Goods like vegetables guate bought a plot of land adjacent to the new market and built his own platform in Pier he paid agencies to send tourists to his entrance in his section expanded and more Outsiders joined in and within a few years of the Market opening the history it was meant to honor had been completely squeezed out now that doesn't mean that this place hasn't been a positive for the region the people who grew up here still make their living on the water and even if our quest for ancient and amazing food is gonna have to wait for our next stop well that doesn't mean that there's not still something a little bit Charming about spending a morning paddling around the amusement park equivalent of a floating Market s [Music] good luck [Music] Okay so we've spent the last 15 minutes driving in circles trying to find parking here at ampawa floating Market which is one of the two biggest and most famous ones outside Bangkok we found we found a place to park but it was like going to be a long walk through massive crowds and vendors everywhere selling Trinkets and knickknacks and if we have one rule on OTR it's that we are not going to work that hard to eat mediocre food we will work as hard as it takes to eat amazing food so we are just driving straight through the parking lot and continuing to a different floating Market that we think might be better it's right down the road all right we did not set out to try to uh improvise like this we thought we had a pretty clear plan of where we're going to film Daria in agreement on this Anand agreement yeah all right let's go let's let's find some slightly better food and maybe potentially much better food thank you [Music] all right we have a good we're off to a good start got a lot of homegrown products we've got honey from a farm garlic when the first table that you see in a floating Market is garlic covered in dirt that means that we're not in tourist land quite as much anymore [Music] but we're here for the floating Market part of this so as much as I want to try some of this stuff I want to get to the boats first this is taka market and this was starting to feel promising here there was a laid-back Village kind of atmosphere and so much food all around that I couldn't wait to start taka on the map is pretty much directly between Domino's but culturally it really couldn't be any more different here the market is far from the main roads tucked between farmland and coconut palm plantations it's not easy to find in the ramshackle surroundings make it feel like a real slice of old Thailand it's tempting to look at something like this and just assume it's authentic while seeing something like our first stop is nothing but a monument to capitalism but the truth is this one's actually even newer and like every single floating market today it also comes from a government initiative meant to boost tourism but there is one critical difference that explains why this one doesn't look like its more famous cousin and it's the key to understanding why these two places on the same Canal feel so wildly different thanks in part to the success of tourist landmarks like the floating markets by the end of the Vietnam War Thailand was one of the most visited countries on Earth within a generation driven by a booming tourism sector the Thai economy was prospering but there was a growing divide between the urban Elite and the rural poor even Countryside attractions like dominon sadwak had primarily put money into the hands of Rich investors like guay instead of benefiting The Villages where they were built so with growing poverty and farming communities the government came up with a program known in English as CBT or community-based tourism the idea was to work within a local culture to find ways to bring visitors through things like floating markets but with the money generated intended to remain in the Villages and to sustain traditional ways of life at taka the idea was to take the local food and craft markets that long ago moved from water to land and simply put them back on the water with a few extra touches the tourism Authority brought in experts to help turn Waterfront Houses into Homestay accommodation and traditional local crafts like making sugar from coconuts were promoted as cultural heritage that idea by the way was not limited to just this one market if you remember in our hallmark Video we visited a floating Market in the middle of bank account that one was built in 2004 as part of the same CBT initiative and it's fully controlled by the bankachow community only locals are allowed to sell at the market products must be made or sourced locally and nobody is allowed to sublet their space it's been a tremendous success one also mirrored by famous markets like Colleen Chun and konglat my own both of which see thousands of tourists visit every week to catch a glimpse of an ancient lifestyle and both of which were also built in the early 2000s with the money going directly to the local people now taka was one of the first markets built under this initiative and it wasn't without complications by the New Millennium most of the young people here had left going off to the factories or to find work in Bangkok the farmers and Cooks who remained were from an older generation and still ran the market like in the really old days opening only when the lunar calendar sent to no more than a few days a month so the government paid each vendor a wage of 300 Baht per day just to show up on a normal schedule that way when visitors would come they'd at least find the market open the payment stopped after a year but by then this Market had caught on and earned a reputation and that reputation most of all came from the famous local food [Music] okay so what do I do with this open and eat [Music] let me show you real quick so this is going to be the fermented uh sticky rice which is going to be mildly alcoholic [Music] thank you I think this fermented even more just sitting out in the sun this morning and now it's like and it's proper full-on like I would guess 10 to 12 percent right I have another spoon in here if you prefer [Music] all right so we had two more markets to visit and the last place was awesome and we were driving even further from the highway but it had become clear that on this Mission there was one thing we'd just have to accept all right first there's something I don't think I've told you before on this channel the first time I came to Thailand I really didn't like it actually the first several times I came I wasn't really a fan the problem with tourist economies everywhere is that over time two parallel countries take shape there's the one where people live and work and struggle and survive and the one intended to give you the experience you want to create the place of your imagination and eventually that fiction becomes a reality at least when you're only here for a short time in Bangkok perhaps the most densely packed Hotel district is in an area on sukumfit known as Nana this was where in the 1960s most of the western quality hotels were located and so it's where tourists would typically stay around the time that floating markets became trendy with so many tourists staying in one place hotels and entrepreneurs set up travel agencies all around to help foreigners get to the popular spots and to take their own cut of the profits they set up shared van trips and organized itineraries to places they knew would make the most money and draw the biggest crowds Raja dominorn Stadium the Grand Palace and Damen sadwak floating Market is what we wanted in an industry developed to make sure it's what we got all around these places would come more businesses catered to foreigners massage parlors Go-Go bars souvenir stores we wanted Thai food but got disgusted by organ Meats so we got a steady diet of pad thai and mango sticky rice by the 1990s most locals got around by car or motorbike but we like tuk-tuks so inside the bubble that's the quote authentic mode of transportation it's a well-oiled machine and Thailand does tourism better than almost anywhere but there's still something a little bit I don't know Truman Show about all of it something just feels a little bit off I hated it and hated coming here because that's all I'd seen that's all I thought there was now obviously I was wrong and I hope this channel is my long-form apology for how wrong I was but I still have a visceral fear or hatred of setting foot back inside that bubble sometimes I know I go too far and overshoot the moral High Ground like after moving here I swore I'd never go to a fight at Raja dominorn it's popular and touristy and just unfathomably overpriced for foreigners and yet honestly it's a ton of fun and if you want to feel some kind of authenticity just leave the ringside seats and walk up to the third deck and sit behind the chain link fence with the gamblers and degenerates and you'll have the time of your life like that's the thing here Both Worlds exist right on top of each other it's possible for something to be made for tourists and yet authentic all at the same time and even in a floating Market built by the government for the purpose of generating tourism money you might still find that the old traditions you thought were extinct are actually right there it exactly where they're supposed to be [Music] Jasper you want to ask anybody if they have there's a floating Market [Music] it is hot I don't know where we are we've messed up our shoot already and blown off the second location uh now we're just following the canals where it takes us I don't know what our mission is but we are on a mission [Music] alright so in the order of things that are exciting for a food guy there are markets entirely for tourists markets built for their Community to service tourists and then markets so hidden that you've got to stop to ask for directions this was it the Holy Grail this is something I honestly didn't even know existed in 2023 a floating Market built as part of the CBT program but one in a place where the old Canal culture never really stopped where local customers come here for their Everyday Food and where the fenders well the ones that we met they've been doing this for so long that they made their living selling food from their sampons before the roads were built and never gave up a way of life that maybe isn't extinct after all right [Music] we [Music] um foreign [Music] [Music] let's give this a try thank you it's so good [Music] we started today honestly skeptical of whether we'd find any great food at the floating markets um we found the First floating Market to be exactly what we thought it was going to be then the second one we stopped at after we completely blew off the other famous one the second one had some really cool stuff that was pretty much on par with a normal Market that's just set up as a tourist you know boat floating Market then there's this and this is I have not had my first bite of this but I can already tell you this is one of the coolest eating experiences that we will ever have here in Thailand I love everything about the setting of where we are the fact that we have to take our shoes off sitting on the ground surrounded by people who are just staring at us because they're so not accustomed to having tourists coming here especially holding cameras but obviously the first place we went today everyone had a camera um so wow you can see she's smiling she knew I'd like this the fish cakes oh my God there's so much flavor in it all right I'm gonna try some of the stuff that we bought from the um from the ladies on the boat [Music] it's salty tiny bit sweet you see the chunks of coconut in here I mean that's all just chunks of fresh coconut so good [Music] this is like Transcendent level good and that's worth the drive level good yeah man uh mission accomplished this is super cool um can you find a great meal at a floating Market yes you just got to work a little harder to get there [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] something foreign [Music] well as you can probably tell by the sound we are on a dirt road which is a first in central Thailand for us but we've gone about as far away from the tourist Trail as we can and still be in this uh Racha Buri floating market area where this you know this big space where all the canals are still intact and there's still a floating Market culture and obviously as we've told you throughout the day most of that is preserved for tourism we have found some places that are not and man how cool was that last place but yeah so far so good I think that we have pretty appropriately proven the point that if you want good food you don't go where all the tourists go I'm wasn't coming out here to try to prove that point we really wanted to be open-minded but man there's such a difference in how uplifting it feels sitting by the river in a place like that last place versus getting just hounded by vendors screaming at you to buy Pad Thai and mango sticky rice [Music] foreign [Music] it's not a floating market and Anand made the point that actually this is probably a more authentic version of a floating Market than anything else that we've seen because here even though it's listed as a floating Market it doesn't look like what we expected but we're standing on a pier every Market stall selling Meats selling vegetables selling homemade Goods they all have a pier and their Inland buildings built out onto the river and so this is nothing touristy at all about this it's not photogenic but when you talk about the actual authenticity of a floating Market this might be closer to the truth than anywhere else we've stopped here if you want to buy something you know and what the vendors were telling us is that for a long time now nobody really comes up to these peers they're pretty much abandoned now you know all the conferences done Inland but the way this used to work when it was built would be you know this is a market it's the same as any other wet Market in Bangkok except everyone has these peers where you want to come buy something you you come up on your boat and you buy what you need and then you continue and I think if you want to really kind of get a sense of what Commerce truly would have been like in in Bangkok you don't go to a place like I mean there is a reason why people like going to those photogenic uh floating Market Starry how did our reel do or how did the Instagram story end up doing from the the first place very well so I mean there's a reason why everyone wants that classic photograph of the beautiful boats in the middle of the canal um but in terms of the actual authenticity of going back in time to what Bangkok used to be like you know ignore the highway ignore the sound of the cars going by ignore the giant Hospital in Bangkok Bank Tower over there and you just imagine being here at a wet Market where you know you come up here on your boat you'd buy what you need to continue and and this is really what it looked like this is this is our it's kind of a cool way to end in some ways because this probably provokes a little bit more thought you know than than anywhere else we've been a little disappointed that everything's closed but you know what are you gonna do we had a great day [Music] subscribe to the channel for more from OTR thank you so much to everyone who supports us on patreon it means a lot to us and it really helps find links to our social media in the description box below foreign [Music]

2023-06-14 13:15

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