Just 74 km southwest of Bangkok, in Songkhram province and a few kilometers from the Gulf of Thailand, lies a place called Amphawa. This small town is built along the canals that flow into the Mae Klong River.

Our adventure begins with the departure from Bangkok. Because this place isn't particularly well known among non-Thai tourists, the instructions for making the trip are, to put it charitably, confused. Part of the problem is that the Thai woman who recommended it is our son's girlfriend, and since she goes everywhere by car she never takes public transportation for short trips near Bangkok, which makes her essentially useless as an advisor on that front. The way we behave inside our own culture often blinds us to the confusion we can cause when we fail to give precise directions. Not a single guidebook offered a decent explanation of how to get there, so we threw ourselves into the adventure proper.

Just finding the right bus stop to get us anywhere near our destination was already an adventure, because it turns out there are two bus stations in Bangkok for southbound routes: one old, one new. They have names that are nearly identical and they sit quite close to each other. Everyone in Bangkok knows the old one, which is thoroughly third-world in feel but overflowing with people; only a handful know the new one, which looks like an airport and is, for that very reason, somewhat desolate.

Since we'd planned the trip with a French friend (who speaks even less Thai than we do), we arranged to meet at what we assumed was the one and only station. The result: we ended up at the new one, she ended up at the old one. After several rounds of mobile phone calls in which whatever she was seeing clearly bore no resemblance to what we were seeing, we arrived at the conclusion that two stations existed.

Out of courtesy to her, since she'd come alone, we decided to go to the old station and take a bus from there that would also stop at the new one on its way out.

After nearly two hours on the road, because the driver moved at a leisurely pace and made several stops along the way, we arrived in Samut Songkhram.

At first glance this is an unremarkable Thai town, except for something genuinely extraordinary: a market that sets up directly on top of an active railway line. The train apparently passes through about eight times a day, so the vendors pack up their stalls each time to let it through and then lay everything back out again. We didn't have the luck of seeing the train pass, since we only went through Samut Songkhram on our way back from Amphawa, but our son, who'd come a few weeks earlier with his girlfriend, described how entertaining it is when you happen to catch it. On this subject, I once received one of those videos that everybody forwards around showing the magnificent chaos that erupts when the train rolls through the "market," though it carried the glaring error of claiming the whole thing is in Bangkok.

We continued on a small open truck to Amphawa, but since we had no reservations we started asking around and looking for a guesthouse or small hotel (there are no other kinds).

This being a very local sort of destination, Thai visitors know exactly what they want to do and see and plan accordingly, which meant the most charming little place in town was already full.

After asking around we ended up at a place whose exact nature we were never quite certain of. It looked like a family's weekend house, and yet by evening, viewed from the guesthouse directly across the water, the side facing the river seemed to function as a restaurant. We walked through the house, or whatever it was, and sat down on the dock to wait with complete patience (as one always must around here) while they figured out where they were going to put us. Naturally, while all this was being sorted out, our Thai hosts did what Thai hosts always do: invited us to sit down and share whatever they happened to be drinking or eating at that moment.

They eventually ferried us across the narrow canal one by one in a rather unstable canoe-like boat and got us settled in a guesthouse. It was amusing to watch how seriously they took the whole process, and how badly we negotiated the price for two very typical rooms with floor mattresses and almost no furniture, as is customary here. No private bathrooms, of course, though we didn't consider that much of a hardship since bathrooms in this country tend to be spotlessly clean, like most things in general.

From the moment we arrived we were able to absorb something genuinely Thai in the atmosphere, and, as in my meditation practice, something deeply Asian in the pace of life.

Thais are always distinguished by their warmth, but in Amphawa that hospitality was particularly striking. Always ready to help, to try to understand you as best they can.

You walk along these small docks that lead to houses, shops, restaurants, taking in so many interesting things that it becomes impossible to describe them exactly as you perceived them in the moment. People live in Thai houses in the old, traditional style. In places like this (and even in some corners of Bangkok), the facades are often nothing but doors that fold completely open, exposing everything inside, and fold completely shut again. All dark wood, with sloping roofs. These houses are typically large open living spaces with tatami-style floor seating, mattresses, and cushions on the ground. Even the dining tables are low, meant for eating while sitting on the floor. Unlike in other cultures, Mexico's included, Thais don't cook inside their homes. Almost everything is cooked outdoors, which is why the houses don't smell of food and are far less likely to catch fire. The climate, of course, makes this easy. Even in Bangkok you'll sometimes find apartments with no built-in kitchen, because people simply put their burners and portable stoves on balconies or open areas. Finding a kitchen with an oven is rarer still, which is why those of us from elsewhere end up in places that have been built or adapted to include something closer to a Western-style kitchen.

Life in Amphawa faces the river entirely. People fish, swim, bathe, toss their organic scraps, clean their things, and carry on in these canals, which look remarkably clean compared to most of the ones in Bangkok. In the mornings things start late, since this is a weekend getaway and people stay up very late into the night.

By afternoon, people fill every corner of the place, and especially the market. This floating market is one of the famous ones for remaining genuinely authentic, displaying its remarkable edibles and all manner of things. We discovered new desserts and dishes there, as tends to happen whenever we move around Thailand, given the astonishing variety of its food and the ways it's prepared.

The one sit-down meal we had was at a very simple restaurant where, unable to communicate effectively, we had to stand up and point at whatever we wanted. It didn't turn out quite as expected, but we enjoyed it all the same. Our friend had a harder time of it, being a vegetarian with more particular ideas about food than we have.

By afternoon the boats begin arriving with their loads of food. Whatever they're selling from those boats looks far more tempting than anything we ate or saw in any restaurant. The problem is that we haven't learned to eat the way Thais do, perfectly content to sit on any staircase, tuck themselves into any corner, or even stand while eating (though I'll admit that in Mexico this is also fairly common).

Once night falls, taking a boat out to see the fireflies is practically mandatory. The place is famous for the sheer abundance of these insects, and it draws crowds especially on moonless nights, when the darkness makes the spectacle easier to appreciate.

We hired a boat through the guesthouse and climbed aboard with a crowd of people. Boat after boat setting out along the river to find the glowing insects.

Like everything these days, there are too many of us wanting to see the same thing, which makes it nearly impossible to experience anything with few or no other people around. The sense of discovery we enjoyed for so many years in Mexico has largely been lost to this.

The ride took quite a while and, though it grew a little tedious toward the end, it was worth it. Suddenly you begin to see trees so thick with fireflies you'd swear someone had strung them with blinking lights. Curiously, the insects, all clustered together in the trees, synchronize their blinking, switching on and off in unison, which, at least to us, gave the whole thing an oddly artificial feeling. Laurence, our French friend, at one point started insisting they were electric lights and that someone was pulling our leg. But no, they are fireflies, and what's really happened is that we've all grown so accustomed to suspecting a trick that genuine wonder catches us off guard. The trees look like Christmas trees hung with blinking lights. After roughly two hours on the water we returned satisfied, feeling we'd witnessed something worth seeing. The two-hour commentary on board had been entirely in Thai, of course, so if it hadn't been for two young Thai women who, as is so often the case with Thais, stepped in without even being asked, noticing that we were the only three non-Asians on the boat and beginning to translate bits of the explanation for us, we would have understood nothing. As always, and at the risk of repeating myself, I want to say that the best thing about this country is its people.

It was a wonderful weekend, made especially so by seeing customs more authentic than anything you find in a city, which even when it's very Thai has become very cosmopolitan, and that almost always means too many things becoming identical from one city to the next.

Sanuk (the Thai spirit of finding joy and fun in everything)