Foreigners use boat, Thai people use car to Floating Market?

Cite this article: Arunrangsiwed, P. (2020). Foreigners use boat, Thai people use car to Floating Market? Retrieved from https://sw-eden.net/2020/05/27/foreigners-thai-floating-market-travel/

I went to two floating or riverside market in Thailand to collect some data for my research study. They were in Bangkok and Nonthaburi. Most hawkers agreed for the researcher to pin their shops into Google maps, but they did not ask for other option, like making the English menu or making a website for them. They were very happy with my project.

In fact, I want to contribute this to another market in Nonthaburi, but I cannot. I guess, if I got the opportunity to contribute to that market the hawkers there will be very happy, too. But! you know what? The manager of that market did not want anything from the outsiders. She was afraid of something I could not identify, or she might have prior bad experience with the outsider before.

Most hawkers agreed that they could be benefited from the pinned location. They believed that the added information in Google Maps can help increase their income. If there are higher number of the visitors, they could earn more income from their purchasing behavior.

Anyway, anyhow, I could see the difference between two markets I had visited. The data collected from the market in Bangkok are all higher in average than another market. All of the difference might be able to describe by the location difference. The market located in Bangkok area was a part of river network. The river network is the way many floating markets and tourist attractions linked by the river transportation. The boat transportation connects many places together. The foreigners who did not rent the car to drive around Thailand, can use this transportation to visit many places in the same day. On the other hand, the market located in Nonthaburi was the stand-alone market. There was no public boats from other floating markets. Most visitors of this market were Thai local people who drove the cars themselves.

Without the river network, the hawkers may not expect to have more foreign customers, even their shops were shown in Google Maps. Before now, I conducted another research study that got the research question, what is the most important factor that Thai people choose to visit local floating market is? The answer I got in those day is that Thai people made the decision because they heard from friends or saw the facebook posts from friends. I mean Google Maps does not have much influence for Thai people choice to visit new place, but it might only help them get to the place with the suggested direction.

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.

Thai floating market

tourism attraction in watercolour

Thai local riverside market I drew this by using watercolor I think it is about the water river and environment