Day tour - Floating Market and Thai cultural show

On monday, i booked a tour to see the famous floating markets & a cultural show.
I always wanted to see the floating markets, but you need to get up early (8am - i know..not that early, but early enough for a backpacker) and last time i was in Bangkok i never made it up in time...

I always thought the market was somewhere in Bangkok, but it's actually an hours drive out of the city. We went in a mini bus, and i noticed another amusing sign ...


..school boy humour i know, but i couldn't resist taking the photo...


The markets sell everything from hats to food and were stunning...we took a wooden paddle boat around the canals...













....though the markets are a victim of their own success and have become very commercial..




I bought some small, freshly made coconut pancakes for lunch ....




...and then we boarded a motored long tail boat for a trip round the village...




Next we boarded the minivan again for lunch and to see the cultural show at a place called the 'Rose Garden'..

Tours are a great way to meet people and i met this Korean guy called Hyojun who was really funny...



..and this girl from Brighton who'd been away from the UK for two and a half years !!! Here she is trying her hand at grinding rice..




While i was wandering around, this lady in traditional Thai dress asked me if i wanted to take a photo together, so i said yes, took the photo and then she asked me for a tip..!! Fell for that old one again... this photo cost me 50p..



The cultural show was great...it had both pretty ladies and thai boxing (which i used to do many years back)...

Traditional dances..the finger and coconut dances (the latter being a southern dance)..



Managed to get a few mediocre pics of the boxing due to a 7 foot Dutch man deciding to sit in the front row...why do they always do that?

The first photo is a ceremonial dance. Both boxers have to do this before fighting...




All in all it was a great day. I paid about GBP 16 for the tour which i was happy with till i walked past a travel agency selling the same tour for GBP 12.. :(
One thing i've learnt is that if you use travel agencies on the main backpacker streets, you'll be paying inflated prices. If you walk just a few streets away, you'll get much better deals...

So i booked my ticket to Kanchanaburi, in the west of Thailand (the town next to the river Kwai and the infamous Burma-Thai railway) through this new agency. A single cost me £4.50. I found some of the others who'd bought tickets from other agencies paid more than double !! This is the agency.. i recommend it, run by 2 efficient and honest Thai ladies on Th. Samsen road near the canal..