WALK 2 BANGKOK YAI
WALK 3 BANGKOK NOI
PART II: BANGKOK
WALK 4 RATTANAKOSIN INNER ISLAND 1
WALK 5 RATTANAKOSIN INNER ISLAND 2
WALK 6 RATTANAKOSIN INNER ISLAND 3
WALK 7 NORTHERN OUTER RATTANAKOSIN
WALK 8 EAST OUTER RATTANAKOSIN 1
WALK 9 EAST OUTER RATTANAKOSIN 2
WALK 10 SOUTH OUTER RATTANAKOSIN
WALK 11 NORTH OUTER CITY
WALK 12 DUSIT
WALK 13 CHINATOWN 1
The Shady Ladies of Sampeng Lane
WALK 14 CHINATOWN 2
WALK 15 CHINATOWN 3
WALK 16 THE EUROPEAN DISTRICT 1
WALK 17 THE EUROPEAN DISTRICT 2
WALK 18 BANGRAK
WALK 19 RAMA III ROAD AND BANG KRACHAO
WALK 20 PATHUM WAN 1
WALK 21 PATHUM WAN 2
WALK 22 PATHUM WAN 3
Index
Preface
Bangkok is not an easy city to understand. Visitors are perplexed by what appears to be an endless sprawl, and information is not easily available. Tour groups will be taken to the main sights, where they will be dazzled by the splendour but have little context in which to understand what they are looking at. Independent travellers will seek out sights and find the friendly little brown notice boards installed by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to be a big help, but again there is little available to guide them there in the first place, and to provide the background information that those with a serious interest in exploring this fascinating city will need.
22 Walks in Bangkok is designed as both a history of the city and as an exploration guide. The idea grew out of a series of columns I wrote for a local magazine some years ago, in which I took a number of localities and attempted to explain what they were and how they got there. When I first set out on the series, I wondered why it hadn’t been tried before. I soon found out. The information is widely scattered, and there was little in the way of informative guidebooks for a journalist with limited time and a looming deadline. The series was successful and ran for three years, but I was never entirely happy with the content, feeling it could have been much better.
I had been intending for a long time to return to the concept and create a full-length book, but the scale of the task was formidable. Simply rewriting the columns was not possible, as the book needed to be packed full of detail, and to have a narration that actually walked the reader into, and around, the historic districts. For a long time I kept the idea in my mind, where it sat as a continually nagging presence. Eventually, with the encouragement (and immense patience) of publisher Eric Oey, I started, and finished. The book has involved an enormous amount of research, a lot of help from a lot of kind people, and an extraordinary amount of shoe leather. For me, it has been worth every minute. Before I started, I thought I knew Bangkok well. I now know it a whole lot better.
My hope is that anyone with an interest in getting below the surface of Bangkok, and in discovering its old districts, temples and palaces, and its various nooks and corners, will use this book as a guide and find the same satisfaction in exploring the city that I have.
INTRODUCTION
Bangkok Begins
Brown as the earth it flows upon, warm and languid and sensual, the Chao Phraya River winds and loops southwards across the central plain of Thailand towards the South China Sea, a distance of 370 kilometres (230 miles), the alluvial terrain at its lowest point only 1.8 metres (6 ft) higher than the surface of the ocean. Across this fertile plain has moved a changing cast of people who have left scattered remains behind them, the earliest recognisable civilisations having been those of the Mon, the Khmer, and the Malay.
Around the seventh century a.d., the Tai people living in the mountainous regions of southern China began to move further southwards, away from the spreading influence of the Han Chinese, establishing settlements in the northern highlands of what are now Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. One group of migrants founded a town named Chiang Saen on the southern bank of the Mekong River, which rose to be a small but powerful kingdom. Over the centuries the migrants spread westwards and southwards, settling into the river valleys of the mountainous regions, founding villages and towns and kingdoms. By 1100 a.d. the Tai were firmly established at Nakhon Sawan, on the fringe of the central plain, where the Ping and the Nan rivers come together to form the Chao Phraya.
The migration of the Tai people into the Upper Chao Phraya Valley brought them into contact with the outer reaches of the Khmer empire. Centred at Angkor, the empire had spread westward across the central plain of Thailand, absorbing Mon kingdoms that had earlier spread into the region from Burma. One of these was Sukhothai, a trading settlement on the banks of the Yom River, the main tributary of the Nan. Sukhothai seems to have been loosely controlled by both the Khmer and the Mon at various periods, and possibly