Best Bangkok Floating Markets for Foodies – Tha Ka, Bang Noi and Amphawa

The best Bangkok floating markets for foodies do not include touristy Damnoen Saduak in our opinion. These are the mouthwatering markets to explore if you’re a fan of beautiful fresh local produce, fantastic street food, and a lively atmosphere thanks to locals rather than tourists. Skip the markets jammed with big tour groups and make a beeline for these comparatively lesser-visited markets, which offer a better insight into daily life as much as delicious food.

The best Bangkok floating markets for foodies do not include those you see on the tourist ads. A birds-eye-view of a canal crammed with narrow wooden boats, laden with tropical fruits, fresh vegetables, fragrant flowers, and aromatic herbs, being rowed by smiling women wearing woven hats may be picturesque and might be Thailand’s most iconic image.

Yet, sadly, the reality on the ground – or water – these days at Damnoen Saduak, the Bangkok floating market that’s featured time and again in tourism promotions, is far different to what’s presented. Boats now brim with tacky souvenirs, Singha beer t-shirts and other tourist tat, and you’ll see more foreigners posing for photos with oars in hand than locals shopping for food – let alone vendors plying their trade.

And the food is generally terribly disappointing. Give Damnoen Saduak a miss and get to these local markets, which in our opinion are the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies. And if you don’t have time for an excursion to these markets, get to Wang Lang Market on the Chao Phraya River or if you’re in the Thai capital for the weekend, to Bangkok’s secret river island, Koh Kret, which also has a delicious little local market.

Best Bangkok Floating Markets for Foodies

Fortunately, the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies aren’t merely tourist attractions. They have been an integral part of Thai culture, commerce and social life since the 1782 founding of Bangkok, a city built upon water.

Waterways and canals or khlongs, man-made and natural, formed the main transportation system in Bangkok until 1851 when roads were established.

Serving as highways and back-roads, merchants moved goods by barge and boat, selling their wares and produce to riverside dwellers whose stilted wooden homes perched precariously atop the water.

Marketplaces formed on and around the busiest bits, on the water and docks, while on more tranquil sections, vendors rowed to homes like door-to-door salesman or home-delivery guys.

What this means for food-lovers visiting Bangkok is that within an hour or two of the chaotic centre, there are scores of floating markets operating on quiet canal-sides and riverbanks of Bangkok’s outer village-like suburbs, provincial towns and semi-rural communities surrounding the capital.

Trading primarily on weekends and frequented mostly by locals and Thai tourists, the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies remain relatively off the beaten track for most tourists to the Thai capital, which is why they make such a wonderful alternative to the tourist markets. Get there before the secret is out and the big travel companies start including them on their tours.

Best Bangkok Floating Markets for Foodies

Here’s our guide to the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies:

Tha Ka Floating Market

As soon as you arrive at Tha Ka Floating Market, you can smell that this is easily one of the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies. At the entrance to this low-key local market, between vendors selling traditional folk music CDs and Thai orchids, the sweet aromas from a smoky barbecue should lure you to your breakfast: grilled skewers of bananas doused with coconut sugar sauce, made to a secret family recipe.

Once you reach the shaded waterfront, prettily decorated with flowerpots, you’ll find smiling women set up to trade on the concrete and timber boardwalks, and sheltering from the scorching sun beneath big umbrellas on their wooden longtail boats.

What to Eat at Tha Ka Floating Market

As at all of these floating markets, there’s a mix of vendors selling fresh local produce from surrounding farms, hot pre-prepared food they rose in the wee hours to make, or meals and snacks that they’ll cook to order. Each woman will specialise in one, or at most, two or three, particular dishes or treats.

Make sure to try the pan-fried mussels, simmered so that they’re warm, plump and soft, with a sticky texture different to the crisp-fried mussels typically found in Bangkok, and sprinkled with crunchy sprouts and served with chilli sauce.

And save room for the grilled banana skewers you spotted at the entrance, which are doused in a sweet coconut sugar sauce.

More Things to Do at Tha Ka Floating Market

If you can’t resist snapping one of those iconic overhead shots of the colourful floating food stalls, the best photo opportunity is from the top of the diminutive wooden bridge. From there, you’ll see boats for hire, disappearing down canals for a pleasant tour through lush tropical jungle: as you cruise the canal, you’ll see women rowing their mobile eateries door to door and get to taste a caramel-like coconut sugar at an artisanal family factory.

Bang Noi Market

Slightly larger than Tha Ka, charming laidback Bang Noi Market is another of the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies. It has more character than Tha Ka floating market, too, with wooden stilted boardwalks supporting traditional wooden houses that are home to grocery shops, funky cafés, a handful of chic boutiques, and even a few home-stays that draw locals and Bangkokians alike.

You’ll find food stalls clustered at the entrance near the temple where the tuk-tuk will drop you, as well as dotted around the boardwalk.

What to Eat at Bang Noi Market

Where the canal meets the coffee-coloured river, you’ll find the characterful ‘Coffee Bang Noi’ café and at a stall opposite my favourite dish of all: mackerel fried rice served with fermented shrimp paste.

A specialty of Samut Songkram province, which is renowned for its mackerel and shrimp paste, it’s sprinkled with crispy slithers of garlic and shallots and served in an eco-friendly banana leaf bowl. Wash it down with a spring bitter cucumber juice.

Still have room in your stomach? On the opposite side of the canal, at the end of the boardwalk, sit yourself down at a long timber table for a bowl of hot kuay tiew moo nam dang or red pork noodle soup.

More pink than red in colour, the slippery, silky noodles are handmade from a secret family recipe using pink tofu and locally produced coconut sugar, and the pork is some of the most flavourful we’ve ever had.

More Things to Do at Bang Noi Market

Browse the charming shops in the traditional timber houses on the wooden boardwalk to homegrown fashion and handmade jewellery, and local handicrafts that are popular with young Thais rather than tourists. Or just sit with some cold beers to take in the laidback local vibe.

Amphawa Floating Market

Big, buzzy and artsy, Amphawa Floating Market is arguably one of the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies. Heaving with diners and shoppers in the late afternoon, becoming uncomfortably crowded for some, the lively atmosphere is nevertheless part of its appeal and the food second to none.

Attracting a mix of local families and friends, Bangkok hipsters and Asian tourists, it’s Bangkok’s Chatuchak or ‘JJ’ Market on the water. While the other floating markets can be visited in an hour or two each, Amphawa with its dozens of funky shops and cafés, busy eateries, atmospheric home-stays, and, more importantly, floating food stalls, warrants at least a few hours of your time.

Eating is a more organised affair here with boats bearing signs, prices, menus, and photos of dishes, and low benches running alongside the water’s edge with tiny plastic stools. Chilled music wafts from nearby cafés and live Thai country music and jazz bands perform at the bars, encouraging you to linger with cold beers.

What to Eat at Amphawa Floating Market

In the yard at Charn Chala shophouse (ask for directions if you don’t spot it), try the mee krop, crispy deep fried noodles served with tamarind sauce, which has a distinct flavour due to its key ingredient, rosella flower. Wash it down with their purple butterfly pea drink, made to a recipe created by the king’s daughter, Princess Sirindhorn.

Like most of these markets, seafood is a specialty due to the waterside location and proximity to the sea. Choose a boat with a busy cook, sweating over a smoky barbecue and order whatever appears to be the most popular dish.

Our recommendation is a plate of spicy grilled seafood, doused with a fiery sauce, preferably river prawns or cuttlefish or Sumut Songkram’s famous stir-fried razor clam or hoy lord pad cha. If you’re finding the miniscule plastic stools a challenge, settle into a seat at Chao Samran restaurant right by the water.

Save room for ice-cream for dessert at Sri Ma La Ice Cream, which specialises in homemade ice-cream flavoured with tropical fruits and flowers. Sugar apple, salted plum, lychee, butterfly pea, guava, and lotus milk are all scrumptious. Thais top theirs with sweet syrups like ma muang nam pla wan, mango with sweet fish sauce.

More Things to Do at Amphawa Floating Market

When all that eating has worn you out, you can enjoy a revitalising massage on a spa boat, savour the sunset from one of the bridges, settle in to watch a band, and/or take to the water for a boat tour to see the fireflies before you sleep your way back to Bangkok on the bus.

How to Get to the Best Bangkok Floating Markets for Foodies

The easiest way and the most engaging way to reach all of the best Bangkok floating markets for foodies is to visit them on a small group Bangkok floating markets tour (avoid the big tours!) such as Bangkok Food Tours’ Offbeat Floating Markets tour.

The guides are friendly and knowledgeable, groups are small, and you’ll get to try lots of dishes including some we’ve written about, and more! Note that this tour calls into the touristy Maeklong Train Market on the way, where vendors with stalls skirting the tracks frantically move their produce each time a train trundles through, and also takes in a couple of other sights.

If you prefer to travel independently, you could hire a car and driver in Bangkok for the maximum comfort or take a mini-bus to Amphawa (90 minutes; every 20 minutes) from the mini-bus station beside Victory Monument BTS. Bus signs are in Thai so ask the ticket-seller to let you know when your bus is departing and point you in the right direction. (They are used to doing this.)

Once at Amphawa drop-off point buy a return ticket (last bus back is at 8pm), so you don’t miss out on a place.

Also: the ticket-seller is happy to call you a tuk tuk to the other markets. Start with Tha Ka in the morning, Bang Noi around midday, and leave Amphawa for the afternoon/evening. Negotiate for the driver to wait and return you to Amphawa.

If you wish to stay overnight, there are charming homestays at Amphawa Market that need to be booked in advance, though we’ve not tried these yet, and a boat tour to see fireflies to occupy you in the evening.

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