Sunday, October 5, 2008

Boating on the Chao Phraya

We boated up the Chao Phraya the other day. There are many boat drivers happy to charge tourists exorbitant fees for the pleasure of their company, but the city-run boats cost a cool 15 baht. Here's the one that we rode on:
As you can see, it's a roomy boat with seating for 60 or so. Strictly speaking they're intended as buses, but they go on the same river as the site-seeing boats. The sites themselves were certainly mixed. Here's a picture of something that looks kind of like a Wat:
And here's a picture of something that looks kind of like a shanty-town:
The ride was a little harrowing due to the bus-boat's frequent need to cross the lanes of traffic on the river, necessitated by the stops occurring on both banks with equal regularity. On some stretches the river was packed with other boats, some of which were speeding recklessly.

This last picture is for those of you who haven't had the joy of experiencing monsoon rains. Here's a shot off the side of the boat from when the clouds opened up. We get rain like this for about an hour every few days.

1 comment:

Richard said...

I don't suppose those crazy boaters have insurance. Might be a good business. I hope you got an umbrella for the rains.