Floating Market Before the Temple Spires

Dozens of wooden boats crowd a river market at dusk, each piled high with a different kind of goods. Vendors in straw hats and bright shirts paddle narrow canoes stacked with mangoes, bananas, pineapples, dragon fruit, and baskets of spice, while other boats carry rolled batik cloth, clay pots, and paper lanterns. Toucans, macaws, and parrots perch in the flowering trees that crowd both banks, above beds of heliconia, orchids and bromeliads in red, pink and orange. Silhouetted temple spires rise in the distance under a sky streaked pink and gold, marking the far end of the river beyond the last boats. The water narrows toward the horizon, drawing the crowded rows of vendors into a single point. Every boat carries one kind of cargo, so the river reads as a long trail of separate, colorful stalls afloat.