Thailand has so many beautiful places to see and amazing things to experience. On our trip, we only had time to stay in Bangkok so wanted to spend some days getting out of the city. We wanted to experience new things and cool places so booked a tour to see some interesting local markets. We ended up booking this tour: Bangkok: Damnoen Saduak Market and Maeklong Railway Market. When browsing Get Your Guide, we always choose tours with lots of highly rated reviews to find the best ones. Because of this, we’ve done a detailed review of the tour we chose so you can make the best decision for your trip.
Tour Overview
Firstly, depending where you’re staying in Bangkok, you can either be picked up from your hotel or meet at one of several meeting points. You will then drive 1.5 hours to a small train station where you will board a train. This was quite cool as you will have enough time to take some photos on the train tracks before the train arrives.
You’ll have a short ride where you get to go through the Maeklong Railway market and have lots of people take photos as you go past. Then you’ll get off and get to wander through the market and watch that train leave through the stalls. After that you’ll hop back on the bus and have a short drive to the Damnoen Saduak floating market.
Here you’ll get on a boat where you get to have a tour of the area including the market. You’ll then get off and have some time to explore all the amazing stalls. This is also where you’ll have lunch so make sure to bring some cash! After, you’ll hope back on the bus and drive 1.5 hours back to Bangkok. You’ll then be dropped off where you were picked up in the afternoon or early evening depending on traffic.
If this sounds like what you’re after for your day trip, go ahead and book your spot!
Cost and Inclusions
There are eight options to choose from for this tour. Four of them have different meeting points around Bangkok, three of them are hotel pick ups in different languages and then there’s a private tour.
- Group tour with four meeting point options in Bangkok. These options are: River City, Groove at Central World, the Old Siam Plaza and Samsen. All four of these options cost 997 Thai Bhat and the tours run for 7 hours. All the tours start at different times in the morning as they’re from different locations in Bangkok. Please double check the start time from your specific meeting point.
- Group tour in English with hotel pickup: This group tour will pick you up from your hotel if you’re staying in the right area. You can choose either a 5:50am or 8am pickup, but they recommend the earlier one for more time to explore. While they pick you up, the drop off point is the MBK mall in the centre of the city. It costs 1197 Thai Bhat and runs for 7 hours.
- Group tour with hotel pickup: There are two of these, one in Japanese and one in German. Both tours are in English as well as the selected language. They start at 8am and run for 7 hours. If you’d like to book either one of these tours they cost 1498 Thai Bhat.
- Private Tour with Hotel Pickup: This tour starts at 8:30am and costs 7493 Thai Bhat.
Highlights
What we loved about this tour is that it allowed us to experience things that we couldn’t have otherwise. Getting around Thailand on your own can be tricky, so doing tours is often the easiest way to see the sights. We loved the hotel pick up and the easy transport to the markets. This meant we didn’t have to worry about anything which took some stress off us. We also really liked getting to hop on the train (from a street level station) which was easy and on time. As well as ride through the market on it which was a fun and unique experience.
As for the markets themselves, we liked that they were both different from each other. The fact that we got to experience the Maeklong Railway market by both being on the train and then seeing it leave from the market was so cool. Same with the floating market, getting to experience it both on the water and from the land. While we enjoyed both, we preferred the floating market and loved getting to really explore it. We found some great cheap food and there’s also lots of souvenir shops too.
Lowlights
One of the main lowlights was possibly specific to just our tour but was something we still wanted to mention. The driver of our minibus drove so fast! While we absolutely understand driving in South East Asia is different to what we’re used to, it still felt a little unsafe at times. It made the whole day a little stressful but if you get a different driver it might be different for you.
Apart from that, we thought the amount of time we were given at the Maeklong Railway market was not long enough. We only had time to walk around the market for 20 to 30 minutes before the train came through and we had to go back to the bus.
While we did enjoy the boat trip of the Damnoen Saduak floating market, vendors kept pulling our boat over to their stalls to try and sell us thing which we found a little annoying. While we do understand that we were in a touristy market with people needing to make a profit, we didn’t like the lack of control or how often it happened.
Would We Recommend It?
Even with the lowlights, we would still recommend this tour. As mentioned earlier, it’s not an experience that would be super easy to do on your own. If seeing the railway and floating markets is something you want to do, then a tour is the way to do it. The tour we went with is easy and pretty well organised and we enjoyed getting to see both the markets. As long as you’re not wanting to spend hours slowly wandering around the markets. If you’re just interested in a highlights tour and experiencing these cool places while in Thailand, then this tour is great!