Touring Bangkok's Khlong Lat Mayom Floating Market for Its Best Local Food

Travel to Thailand has become a hot topic in recent years, drawing the interest of countless visitors. One of the most popular destinations is the capital, Bangkok, and anyone visiting the city shouldn't miss the delightful Khlong Lat Mayom floating market. In this article, we take a look at the Khlong Lat Mayom floating market tour and the special dishes you can enjoy there.

About the Khlong Lat Mayom floating market

Khlong Lat Mayom is one of three well-known floating markets near Bangkok, just 20km from the city centre. You can get there by taking a taxi from Wongwian Yai (the last BTS station on the Silom line).

Unlike the Damnoen Saduak floating market, which trades on its history, or the tourist-packed Amphawa floating market, Khlong Lat Mayom offers the authentic charm of a genuine local market.

Here visitors can see how locals gather at the market on weekends. Market culture is deeply rooted in Thai daily life, and eating out is not the special occasion it often is in Western culture.

Thai food is so varied that it can easily become the theme of an entire trip to Thailand. Floating markets, also known as riverside markets, gather along very narrow canals, with just a handful of boats moored along both banks.

Food is always the big attraction for anyone visiting a floating market. Diners get to enjoy a fun way of eating, sitting on wooden stools no more than 10cm high and ordering plates of food cooked right on wooden boats.

The largest part of the market is built on solid ground. One side sells fresh produce such as vegetables and fruit, while the other offers all kinds of snacks and sweets in every colour imaginable.

Further inside, visitors can buy clothes, decorations, accessories and toys at low prices. If you have children with you, you can also take them to the horse farm along the way, where they'll love riding horses around the market grounds.

For a perfect morning, you can combine visits to the Taling Chan and Khlong Lat Mayom floating markets. They are only a few kilometres apart, and you can take a long-tail boat to reach other floating markets in Bangkok.

Special dishes to try on a Khlong Lat Mayom floating market tour

When you visit the famous Khlong Lat Mayom floating market, you can't skip the food. Below are some of the best dishes to try on your tour.

Pla Pao – a humble Thai favourite

Although locals consider it everyday fare, this is the most delicious dish visitors must try at Khlong Lat Mayom. Pla Pao is a hugely popular Thai grilled fish. At the market, you'll need to head to the stalls in the middle to find it.

Diners are greeted by dozens of grills lined up along the stall, so each batch brings a hundred fish ready to serve. There's also a wide choice of fish, such as snakehead, tilapia and barramundi.

Once you've picked your fish, the cook cleans it and puts it on the grill. When it's done, it's arranged in an appealing box and served with dipping sauce and fresh greens. The flesh is fresh and grilled just right, so it never dries out, while the sauce adds a rich depth of flavour that diners find irresistible.

Goong ob woon sen

Besides Pla Pao, visitors to the Khlong Lat Mayom floating market should experience Thai cuisine through goong ob woon sen. The stalls selling it are easy to find in the market.

Once you order, the cook puts each component of the dish onto a plate so you can pick and sit down to eat right at the table. The dish is so good that food blogger Mark Wiens came all the way here to try it.

The glass noodles are seasoned with rustic flavours such as garlic, black pepper, ginger and Sichuan pepper, making them soft, chewy and delicious. The prawns are not overcooked, so the meat inside stays rich and succulent.

What makes goong ob woon sen even more memorable is the slightly spicy sauce served alongside. The balance of flavours and ingredients, bringing together sauce, prawns and noodles, wins praise from every diner.

Gai galae

This is a simple dish, yet it offers a sweet flavour and an unforgettable experience for visitors. Gai galae is very easy to find on a Khlong Lat Mayom floating market tour.

So seize the chance to enjoy this special country dish. The grilled chicken is coated in a Thai barbecue sauce made from coconut milk and dried chillies, giving it a gentle heat that is rich, savoury and faintly fragrant with chilli.

Mini pineapples

For Vietnamese travellers, pineapple is a fairly familiar fruit. But when you visit a Thai floating market, you'll soon forget Vietnamese pineapples in favour of those from Chiang Rai.

After peeling, a bit of the stem is left on so you can hold it easily. These pineapples are sweet, crisp, fragrant and very juicy, so you might enjoy them with some of the rich meat dishes in the market. The combination brings a harmony of flavours that will delight you.

Khao lam

Finally, we'd like to recommend a light and very convenient snack. At the end of your Khlong Lat Mayom floating market tour, you can buy some khao lam to take home.

This is sticky rice mixed with sugar and coconut milk, packed into bamboo tubes. The locals then grill the bamboo tubes until the sticky rice inside is perfectly cooked.

As it grills, the rice becomes richer and more tender, and choosing green bamboo gives the sticky rice a deeper flavour. These rice tubes are perfect for taking home or eating on the go. Be sure to enjoy khao lam at the Khlong Lat Mayom floating market, because you won't find it just anywhere.

So now we've explored which special dishes to enjoy on a Khlong Lat Mayom floating market tour in Bangkok. We hope that with what we've shared about floating market food, you won't miss out on these delights on your trip to Thailand.