High on the list of tourist sites in bangkok is the Thonburi floating market. I've never been. My traveling handbook was the Lonely Planet ‘South-East Asia on a shoestring' by Tony Wheeler. The book described the floating market as a tourist trap, and that was back in the 1989 edition!
That said, traveling around bangkok by boat can be much faster than by car – and cheaper than by taxi. I grabbed the shot below while speeding past on my way to visit some temple or other. I don't know if these folks are loading or unloading or if the green vegetation is food or canal weed – probably both.
Every time I've seen the chao Phraya River its been this muddy brown color owing to all the silt washing down from the hills to the north. The boat is a long-tail. It has all the appearance of an auto engine with a straight shaft output to the propeller mounted on gimbals on the transom. The boatman steers the boat by pushing or pulling on the handle protruding forward of the motor, so changing the angle of the driving force relative to the line of the keel. It's a sort of rudder and propeller in one.
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