Foreigners, perhaps unsurprisingly, continued to use the name they had always known and which appeared on all their maps. Eventually Bangkok was registered as the official English language name. Thais call their capital Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, or more usually just Krung Thep, which translates loosely as “City of the Angels”.
A Buddha image in the grounds of a canal-side temple in Bangkok Yai.
PART I
THONBURI
These three walks will take us through Thonburi, which was briefly the capital before Bangkok was founded. We explore the southern bank of the Bangkok Yai canal, walking alongside the old coastal railway line to the former betel nut market and visiting landmarks known to Thonburi’s only monarch, King Taksin. Our second walk takes us through the old harbour district to neighbourhoods settled by the Portuguese, Hokkien Chinese and Cham Muslims, ending at a Lao community of bamboo flute makers. The third of the walks leads us through what was the fortified part of the city, taking in famous landmarks such as the Temple of the Dawn and Wat Rakhang, before visiting a small community founded by bronzesmiths who had fled the destruction of Ayutthaya, with our journey ending at a macabre museum.
WALK 1
WONG WIAN YAI
In Search of King Taksin
Starting from Wong Wian Yai Skytrain station, the walk takes us alongside the Bangkok Yai canal to the temple that is the final resting place of King Taksin.
Duration: 2 hours
Once Bangkok had been founded as the new capital of Siam, Thonburi became something of a rural backwater. A place of market gardens and canals and old temples, it snoozed all the way through the nineteenth century as the Chakri dynasty built Bangkok into a powerful city. Only in the early part of the twentieth century did the world intrude again upon Thonburi, and even then it was to use the former kingdom as a transit point. The turn of the century saw the beginning of the railway era in Siam, and to service the south a line was opened to Petchaburi in 1903, later continuing down to Butterworth, across the Malay border. As there was no bridge across the Chao Phraya, a station was built in Thonburi, next to the Bangkok Noi canal, and passengers made their way across the river by boat.
For several years the northern and southern railway systems operated independently of each other, divided by the river. As rail traffic grew, however, the decision was made to build a bridge across the river and link all the lines at a new station on the east bank next to Chinatown. The Rama VI Bridge, opening in 1927 at Bang Sue, on the northern side of the city, was Bangkok’s first river bridge. Thonburi railway station continued to operate, serving local passengers and also the new railway line that was built to Kanchanaburi, in the west, but the southern railway line now bypassed Thonburi, looping around its northern edge. Five years later, in 1932, the second bridge opened. The Memorial Bridge carries the roadway across the river and has its Thonburi landing near to the mouth of the Bangkok Yai canal. Here, two traffic circles were laid out to link eleven new road projects in Thonburi that in turn connect to highways leading west, south and east.
With a suburban railway service and the laying out of the roads came commercial and residential development, and in recent years the BTS Skytrain has vaulted the river and planted commuter stations, but Thonburi has obstinately refused to follow the same style of growth as Bangkok. No central business district has evolved here, the only international hotels are a smattering along the riverbank, and the shops are for the locals. Thonburi remained officially an independent city and province until it was merged into Bangkok in 1971. Today, although Bangkok residents refer to the west bank in general as Thonburi, the name is officially affixed to only one small district, or khet, of which Bangkok has fifty.
Taksin and his brief kingdom could easily have been forgotten were it not for a revival of nationalism immediately following World War II., and the change of name from Siam to Thailand. Wong Wian Yai, the larger of the two traffic circles, had been a blank traffic island for twenty years. There is in existence a black-and-white aerial photograph taken in 1950, and the only features on the island are the pathways that cross it and what appears to be a tall lamppost in the centre. But the island stands at a point near the old harbour, and outside what had been the fortified walls of Thonburi, and Taksin would have mustered his troops on this ground. Part of the nationalist campaign during this time of great turbulence in Thailand, with a military government newly installed, a changed constitution and a great deal of popular unrest, was to rehabilitate the reputation of King Taksin. The government decided to erect a statue and place it in Wong Wian Yai. The statue was unveiled in 1954, and a ceremony of homage takes place every year on 28th December, the anniversary of Taksin’s coronation.
The first thing to be learned when taking the Skytrain across the river today is that Wong Wian Yai station is not quite at Wong Wian Yai: it is two-thirds of a kilometre away, being located on Krung Thonburi Road. The station steps lead down next to Bang Sai Gai canal, a small waterway that threads its way through this district. On the bank, and visible from the main road, are the red roof and white walls of the Chao Mae Aniew Shrine, a small and ancient Chinese shrine with a small stage in its courtyard for community meetings and performances. Hemmed in by timber houses with open verandas, this quiet setting is the first intimation of the pleasant rural area this must have been within living memory. The canal path leads to a dead end, the water disappearing under a low bridge, so a return to the main road is necessary, followed by a right turn into Somdet Phra Chao Taksin Road. Wong Wian Yai is directly ahead. Of course, long gone is the tranquillity of that old 1950 photograph, the king rising high above a sea of traffic, and pedestrians and advertising signs. Corrado Feroci, the Italian sculptor who spent almost forty years in Bangkok and is regarded as the founder of modern art in Thailand, has cast him in metal and placed him on a reinforced concrete pedestal some nine metres above street level. The king, brandishing his sabre in the direction of Ayutthaya, is mounted on his horse, or to be more correct a Thai pony, an indigenous breed that stands naturally at about twelve hands and which has the toughness and stamina for both military and pack animal use. The circle is a brilliant splash of colour, its gardens planted with red, green and yellow blooms, and the place is frequently lively with gatherings, for it is a focal point for local rallies and community activities. Around the circle is a large selection of shops, prominent amongst them the haunted shell of the Merry King department store, closed for many years now, the darkened entrance to its basement carpark the stuff of B-grade werewolf movies.
Just off the circle is Thailand’s strangest railway line. The Mahachai-Mae Klong line was built by the Tha Cheen Railway Company under a private concession and opened in early 1905, its purpose being to bring fish and farm produce from the coast. The trains run down to the Tha Cheen River, near to where it empties into the sea at Samut Sakhon, a fishing port also known by its older name of Mahachai. There is no bridge there so everyone disembarks, catches a ferry, and boards a train on the other side, which then goes further along the coast to Samut Songkhram, or Mae Klong. Both stretches are the same length, almost thirty kilometres. The line is completely independent of the national railway system and is a single track. Although Wong Wian Yai is the terminus, it is the most modest terminus that can be imagined, for passengers simply walk through a gap between two blocks of nondescript commercial buildings on Somdet Phra Chao Taksin Road, and the platform and ticket office is there, sitting next to the pavement. Railway anoraks love this line, as indeed does anyone who travels on it, because it is rather like a grown-up train set that winds its way out of the city and through the rice fields, orchards and plantations. They coo over its whimsical rolling stock and wayside stations, marvel at the occasionally wiggly rail lines, and hold their breaths during the rainy season as the little trains plough manfully through the lakes that appear at certain stretches, the line disappearing under the muddy water and no one