Samchuk Market

The people of an old market town in Suphan Buri have pulled themselves out of trouble by making their home a tourist attraction, writes Tanaporn Tangcharoenmankong

Sam Chuk, an old market town along the Thajeen River in Suphan Buri province, serves as a good example of how a community can contribute to changing the face of a place. The lively town, which is more than a century old, is today a dynamic and charming place to visit.However, until a couple of years ago, Sam Chuk had been drafting its own obituary for quite some time. The thousands of visitors from all over the Kingdom you see there everyweekend now could not even be imagined in those days.

In the good old days, when boats were the main mode of conveyance, Sam Chuk was an important centre for transporting goods. Merchants from all parts of the country stopped at the town overnight before heading to Bangkok. Thus, it was a very busy place until the coming of the highways.

The busy port almost closed down when the roads came. Many offices moved to Bangkok and the market became quiet with a drastic fall in the number of customers.

And no one would have had the chance to admire the Thai architecture, which has been there since the days of King Rama V, if the people in the area had agreed with the authorities to pull down their old wood houses and replace them with concrete structures.

"The land where the market is belongs to the Treasury Department ," says Pongwin Chaiwirat, a member of the Sam Chuk Market Conservation committee. "The rental contract is renewed every three years. And they were afraid there might be a blaze, so they wanted to demolish the old wooden houses."

It was a great dilemma for local the people, who already had to look for other ways of earning a living after business took a turn south. They basically had two choices, staying with what their ancestors built or pulling it all down.


**If you go to samchuk market you should buy crispy thong muan because it's delicious. I like it.555+