Floating Market in Thailand and Coronavirus Problems

Cite this article as: Arunrangsiwed, P. (2020). Floating Market in Thailand and Coronavirus Problems. Retrieved from https://sw-eden.net/2020/04/08/coronavirus-floating-market/

After I, the researcher, the blogger, and the educator, finished reading many articles and writing the literature review, the results of the past previous studies suggested that scholars and researchers should help heighten the communication quality between the hawkers and tourists. In order to follow this planned process, the researcher of the current study went to two floating market and pin various local shop into Google Maps. To add a new location into Google Maps, the researcher added the photos of the shop, goods, and food menus. The names of some menus were translated into English by the researcher. The telephone number and the categories in English were also added. Hence, the foreign visitors may found Google Maps helpful and this would help them get to each shop in floating markets easier.

Another thing to develop the floating market is to create the English food list for the shops that need this help. Although Google Maps could bring the foreign tourist into the floating markets and make them know each shop, the communication process (buy and sell) will never be completed, if the hawkers and foreign tourists could not communicate about the products or service so well. Hence, the researcher needed to create the English menu for some shops. Firstly, the researcher had to asked the hawkers if they really needed the English menus. The researcher would make it only for those who needed it.

Later, the government announced that almost all of the tourist attractions or places to visit have to be temporarily shut down because of the crisis of COVID-19 outbreak (the fast spreading of Coronavirus in March 2020). Although some Thai menus were translated into English, but the researcher had no chance to give them to the hawkers during this period. Therefore, the researcher needed to keep the menu until she could need these hawkers again. It might be at the end of 2020.

Although there were no reported regarding the satisfaction of English menu, the researcher asked the hawkers about the satisfaction regarding the locations added into Google Maps. Most hawkers expressed their application. Moreover, many of them asked the researcher to pin their friends’ shop into Google Maps, too. Some had the shop in different markets nearby. These hawkers also asked the researcher to pin and add the information of their other shops into the maps, too.

Although the researcher run this project in two floating markets, the added location were more than just in two places. This is because the information of mentioned additional locations was provided by the hawkers. The researcher did not refuse anyone to do it.

For example, the researcher added the location for the fish-ball hawker in the Google Maps. This food shop was in a floating market in a Thai temple. The hawker told the researcher that she also had another shop in a fresh market and her husband also had another shop in a school. She asked the researcher to add the shop in fresh market and school for her and her husband. The researcher could use the similar photos, since all of these shops sold the same thing. Moreover, the research could also ask the information, like, cellphone number and the name of each one from the hawker, too.

As the result of this, the hawkers had a positive feeling, and they wanted the researcher to continue the particular project. In fact the research planned to collect the longitudinal satisfaction regarding the usability of English food menu and information added into Google Maps. However, the COVID-19 crisis changed this plan. The current research study could reveal only-short-term satisfaction of the hawkers toward the added location in Google Maps. There is no long-term information and no data provided by the foreigners who would use such the Google Maps and English menus.

Further studies should complete the aforementioned plan and data collection process, especially after the COVID-19 crisis. This is because at this moment, 2020, most foreigners did not travel around the floating market anymore. We, the hawkers and the researcher, believed that they will come back at the end of crisis.

It is important to note that I posted this article in this webpage before I put everything together and submitted to the university. In other words, I owned the copyrights of this article or blog post, and later, I reused this copyrighted material in the research report. Similarly, I wrote an article for a conference in Phayao, and later, I used the article for the research report. That also means, I owned the copyrighted material before reusing it again in the research report.