After my trip to India, I met up with Michelle and the boys in Thailand for a vacation during the National Holiday in China. We went with our friends John and Ann out to Amphawa to see the floating market there. This is a quiet town around 90 minutes from Bangkok where city folks come for a good seafood meal. Most of the tourists there seemed to be Thai.

The streets were pretty crowded with vendors; since it had been raining pretty hard, they were hiding under big umbrellas.

The main "drag" was a river with shops along both banks.

In some parts of the river, restaurateurs in boats cooked and served up meals in little boats, with their patrons sitting on the docks eating.

Grilled seafood was a popular dish.

Phad Thai was also very popular, including this beautiful variant with squid ink noodles.

Since our party was pretty big, we ate in a restaurant and feasted on local delights. I'm still full just thinking about it.

Long-tail boats cruise the waterways. These are long, slender boats with huge engines mounted out of the water and the driveshaft and propeller extending directly from the engine into the water. To steer, the skipper pivots the entire engine. Here's the lovely bow of one boat.

Here's the pretty purposeful looking working end of the boat.

In the evening, we took a long-tail boat ride around the river to see the fireflies. There were zillions (I counted) of fireflies in the trees around the river. There were so many fireflies that at some points the trees looked like they had Christmas lights in them. The fireflies even blink in some rhythm, further emphasizing their Christmas-light-osity. It was pretty amazing and lovely.