Amphawa Floating Market: the evening market in Samut Songkhram

Amphawa floating market in Samut Songkhram: location, distance and hours

The market runs along a canal in Amphawa district, in the small province of Samut Songkhram southwest of Bangkok. Road distance is about 50 km and the drive takes under 90 minutes when conditions are normal. The Tourism Authority of Thailand puts the run into the province at nearly two hours, so if you need to be in Amphawa by a particular time, plan against the longer figure rather than the shorter one.

Three days a week is all you get. The market's own site states Friday to Sunday, 2 pm to 9 pm, and lists Monday to Thursday as closed. A widely reproduced secondary listing gives the same three days as 15:00 to 22:00, an hour later at each end, so the two versions do not agree on when the lane empties. Work from the official hours and confirm on the spot, since individual shophouses keep their own closing time.

The timing matters more here than at the daily markets further out, because arriving on the wrong day means arriving at an ordinary riverside town with the boats tied up and the grills cold.

• Official site: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 2 pm to 9 pm; closed Monday to Thursday
• Secondary listing: 15:00 to 22:00 on the same three days
• Grilled-seafood boats at the central bridge: midday until late evening
• Small food carts: weekends only

What to do at Amphawa floating market

The setting is a street of old wooden shophouses facing each other across a narrow canal, with a bridge over the middle of it. Most of what happens here happens on foot: you walk the lane, lean over the rails, and eat. The boats are moored rather than circulating, which is the main difference from the morning canal markets.

Food is the centre of the visit. Wooden boats around the central bridge grill river prawns and other seafood priced by weight, and they keep serving from midday into the late evening. At weekends the small carts come out as well, which is when the snack range is widest, from ice cream sandwiches to Yum Magda Talay, a helmet crab egg salad.

Canal circuits leave the waterfront for riverside temples and the island loop, and a standard round takes around an hour. Shared boats only move once their seats are taken and they stop at each point, so the trip often runs longer than the hour it is sold as. Allow for that before you commit to it on a tight afternoon.

After dark the attention shifts to the Mae Klong river and the firefly trees, which is why a lot of people stay on well past dinner.

• Grilled river prawns and Mae Klong mackerel from the boats
• Hoi tod oyster omelette, boat noodles, and pad thai fried to order inside a moored boat
• Khanom sweets, coconut ice cream and desserts built on local coconut sugar
• An hour-long canal circuit to riverside temples or around the island
• Firefly trees along the river in the rainy months

The quietest part of the day, and when the lane fills

Thai government guidance for the calmest version of Amphawa is to arrive before 10:00 and leave after lunch. That reads oddly against an official 2 pm opening, until you look at what actually runs short during the day: parking spaces and canal-side seating, both of which go early. Before midday the town is quiet, the shophouses are opening up and you can choose where to sit.

From mid-afternoon the arithmetic reverses. The seafood boats are already cooking, the coaches and cars come in, and by early evening the lane around the bridge is a slow shuffle. If you want both halves, get there late morning, eat early while the tables are open, and let the crowd build around you.

Leaving at six undoes most of the reason for coming. The hours on the official site run to 9 pm, the grills are still going after that in practice, and the firefly boats only make sense once the light has gone.

Fireflies after dark on the Mae Klong

Fireflies at Amphawa are seasonal. They are usually visible in the rainy months, May to October, and best on dark nights, and sightings are never promised in any given week. A Thai study of Pteroptyx malaccae, the species that puts on the display here, recorded the highest adult population between September and November.

The insects gather in the mangrove trees that line the river, with Sonneratia caseolaris, known in Thai as lamphu, the usual host. Larvae are most abundant in a band five to twenty metres back from the water, so the show sits on the immediate riverbank fringe and you need to be close in to see it properly.

Firefly tourism was promoted from 2004 and hundreds of motorboats began running the river nightly, with light pollution blamed for the decline since. Good practice is a smaller, quieter boat, the engine cut as you approach the trees, and no flash photography. Traditional trips in the Amphawa and Tha Kha canals use paddle boats, the larger of which seat eight.

Getting out from Bangkok, and the tours built around the evening

Amphawa's official site sets out the public chain itself: BTS as far as Bang Wa, onward to the Southern Bus Terminal at Sai Tai Mai, then a minivan into the district, the whole sequence timed there at as little as 90 minutes. A road transfer takes roughly the same, traffic permitting. Either way it is a half-day commitment in each direction once you count the hours you want on the ground.

Most visitors from Bangkok come as part of an afternoon-to-evening trip, because the market has nothing to show at breakfast time and everything to show at dinner. A tour built on that rhythm also solves the pairings: the Maeklong Railway Market is about 7.2 km away, roughly seven minutes by taxi or 15 to 17 minutes by songthaew, open every day from 07:00 to 16:00; Wat Bang Kung is about 6.6 km across the Somdet Phra Sri Suriyendra bridge, receiving visitors daily from 08:00 to 16:30; Tha Kha is about 8.7 km off, trading on lunar days 2, 7 and 12 of the waxing and waning moon plus Saturdays and Sundays, from about 06:00 until noon.

Two tours on this site reach Amphawa and the railway market. The evening tour is the one shaped for this page's reader; the private excursion is the shorter day with its own vehicle.

• Evening tour: English-speaking guide, air-conditioned vehicle, bottled water; meals and personal expenses not included
• Private excursion: licensed English-speaking Thai guide, private transport, local fruits, desserts and a drink, accident insurance with full passport names required at booking

Tourist information, souvenirs and a few practical notes

Tourist information for Amphawa is handled by the TAT Samut Songkhram Office, at 2/1, 2nd Floor, Amphawa Municipality City Hall, Amphoe Amphawa, Samut Songkhram 75110, telephone +66 (0) 3475 2847-8. It is the place to check anything time-sensitive, including whether the hours on the day match the published ones.

The canal communities of Samut Songkhram are known for coconut sugar, made by tapping palm sap morning and evening, boiling it down on a sugar stove and packing it in tins or pressing it into lumps. Dried fruit and snacks travel well too, and the shophouse stalls also carry handmade soaps, woven bags, herbal products and wooden crafts.

Boarding a long-tail boat involves a step down and a wobble, and operators caution that travellers with mobility problems may find getting in and out difficult. On a canal circuit that stops at riverside temples, shoes come off at the door of the hall, so slip-ons save time.

Questions people ask

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