Cold hearted snake

Today was AMAZING, to say the least! 

We booked a tour of the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market for today. The small size tour bus came to pick us up early on in the morning, and we headed out on an hour and a half drive, South East of Bangkok. I left the city, which was exciting to me, though I have found a nice area in Bangkok that I really like a lot. Our hostel is right in that central area, so we are super lucky. 
We met some really nice people on our tour. The way that they arranged these tours is that one bus goes to several locations to pick up different people booked on the same tour, and also those same people may have additional tours that same day so they later separate on to their next adventure. (This info comes in handy and makes more sense later)

We arrived at the first leg of the market tour, which was a river boat ride. I LOVED this part, a lot!

This whole area is made up of rivers, and there are a ton of boats, everyone has nice wooden ones, and small slips just outside their home, and it is a river based community. I really liked it, though the water is this same color throughout Thailand, in Bangkok, and out where we were. It's not clean looking, or smelling.
The tour was a complete tourist trap. I had actually heard a lot of great things about this place, and I also saw it on "No reservations" and was super excited to go here, however, once I arrived, it felt like that same old dirty tourist scam/attraction that I continue to encounter here. I realize that this is their business, and this is how they make money, but honestly, ALL the tourists know to shop at MBK (the best mall/swap meet ever) or at the actual swap meet, NOT here at the river. I really didn't enjoy it. The main reason we wanted to see this place was to eat. It was a let down. Once you get off the main river boat, you are able to hire a person who rows a whole group of people through the material items for purchase area. The whole set up was bad, but we enjoyed riding in a boat..

We actually asked to be let off the boat early, and just get out of there. I had had enough. We walked over to the food, and ate some Thai sausage, which we have come to really love, and then waited to be loaded back onto the bus.
Now, here is the part where all the multiple packing in of people comes in to play. We thought we were just going to be going back to Bangkok, but that wasn't to be so. Our next stop was the nearby Elephant village, where you could take an Elephant ride. If you didn't want to do that, the next place was to be the snake farm...


Once we arrived at the snake farm, we were pretty annoyed that we were being dragged to this place and that when all we wanted was to go back to Bangkok and do our own thing. Nothing worse than being on the agenda of someone else, basically being held captive. So, again, once we arrived, we were annoyed, however, we decided since we were there, we may as well go in.. This is where the day took a turn for the better. Amazing, to be exact!

Once admission was paid (150 Baht= 5 bucks), you could pay 50 baht ( just under 2 dollars) to have a picture with this python!! HELL YEA!

It just got better from there. There was a snake charmer/tamer, who went up against a king cobra, who was equipped with actual venom (they later milked the snake for all to see to prove this). They even took the cobra around for everyone to touch it, because they said that in their culture, if you touch a cobra, you will have good luck. Cute, right? I enjoyed watching people squirm and flinch as the snake came near. I let him wrap it around my shoulders! That picture will have to wait until Ryan posts it. There was another act with a python, then there was a SNAKE FIGHT! A snake, vs. a mongoose!!! The mongoose kicked the cobra's ass.. I mean, it almost killed it! They explained that in the wild, it's a fight to the death, mongoose victorious, however, they weren't going to let that happen there at the ring. It was really impressive how the mongoose went after the snake!

Go check out Facebook for all the videos of the snakes and the mongoose vs. snake fight.. It was amazing!!

So, after being dragged to places that we really didn't want to be in, this place more than made up for that whole scenario, but it wasn't over yet! After our long hour and a half ride back to Bangkok, where we were all tired, we had to make one more stop, to Thailand's largest gem showroom; in fact, it is the world's largest gem showroom, complete with armed guards and all!

So, it was obvious that the gems there were amazing, however, many of the items were complete with cubic zirconium, NOT diamonds, so it was a little silly. Thailand has a thing for tailors, and gems.. both of which are annoying to deal with. Honestly though, the tailors offer amazing deals on custom made suits for men. Women, are better off getting clothes at the department stores. 
This wrapped up our day long tour, and tour of places we didn't need to see, but ended up loving anyway. We got a nice air conditioned free ride away from this place and hopped off on our road, and went exploring. We discovered new places we are sure to love in the future, and enjoyed our walk. We came back to the hostel, had some fun talks with people in the lobby, and then I came up to do my "homework". If I don't set aside time each day to upload photos, and write a blog, SO much will be behind.. after all, we're busy busy busy here in Bangkok!
Until my next post
xoxo