Kings of the Canal on their Skimming Machines - Thailand

My first sight of the fantastic Thai long-tail boats was when watching an old James Bond film as a child. The design with the long tail and the high pitch buzzing sound of the motor always stuck in my memory. In a previous blog I captured the beautiful hidden arts along the canal paths if you haven't seen it please take a look, I have put a link at the end of this blog.

In this episode I would like to share my discovery of the Kings of the Canal. Usually the Klongs (canals) in the centre of Bangkok have an unbearable scent to them, think of all the raw sewage collected from the portable lavatories at a giant music festival and that will paint a clearer picture. But on this particular occasion there was not a hint of brown mist to be inhaled as this canal journey was way outside from the smog, pollution and sewage of The City of Angels (Bangkok) on the outskirts and well off the radar for regular tourists. Observing the longtail boats along the canal was quite entertaining, creating fantastic photographic moments, but really quite tricky to capture on my smartphone due to the warp speed some of the boats were travelling at!

Kings of the Klong

This young gentleman was the Lewis Hamilton of the waterways, you could hear him coming from a mile off and he looked right at the camera with pride on his speeding vessel. His turbo-charged boat was a lot louder and faster in comparison to all the other water skimmers.

This jolly gentleman looked over at me with joy as I took his picture, the glass cabinet was full of chicken to put in chicken noodle soup and the metal vat behind was full of hot soup. We saw him on our return journey and he had an even bigger beaming smile! We noticed he had no chicken left, so he must have sold all his food for the day, hence the extended smile.

As you can see from this captain's glare, he was less than pleased with my canal snapping. Perhaps he lost a race to the young buck in my first picture, or maybe the shop was sold out of his favourite ice-cream?

We saw this speed merchant several times, zipping back and forth along the klong, I think he would've given the young buck a run for his money in a race. Perhaps he was a canal courier, he certainly seemed extremely busy!

Here he is again smiling like the Cheshire Cat, after all this is 'The Land of Smiles'.

Nature's Canal Dwellers

*Another canal treat, seeing these ducks paddling along the water in formation. I also created a silhouette portrait of myself photographing the birds in military mode!

Thank you sincerely for reading my post fellow steemians. Remember sharing is caring, so if you enjoyed this post and would like to see more posts from Thailand, don't forget to share, upvote and follow.

Peace Out fellow Steemians

Previous Canal Art Discovery:
https://steemit.com/travel/@theexplorer/discovering-hidden-gems-of-the-canal-bangkok-thailand

[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 13.638824 lat 100.413805 long Kings of the Klong (Canal) Rama 2, Thailand d3scr)