Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WALK 10
SOUTH OUTER RAT TANAKOSIN
The Potters' Village
A potters' village founded by Mon immigrants, the city's biggest flower market, Little India,
the first modern school, and a Japanese ossuary that was the hideout for an army officer on
the run, are all to be found in this colourful district.
Duration: 3 hours
With the siege of Pegu in southern Burma in 1757 and the subsequent fall of the city
to the Burmese King Alaungpaya, the last independent Mon kingdom vanished.
The Mon had once been a great people, the first recognisable civilisation in Southeast Asia.
They are believed to have originated in eastern India and to have migrated eastwards across
Burma and the central Siam plains, bringing Buddhism with them. The Khmer empire and
the rise of the Tai had seen them pushed back into Burma, where they settled throughout
the south. Now that Pegu was in Burmese hands, the Mon were a people without a country.
A large number of Mon had migrated to Ayutthaya during the second half of the sixteenth
century, during a time of great internal turmoil in Burma, and they had joined the Siamese
in fighting the endless Burmese wars of this period. Now a new wave of migrants followed,
being welcomed by the king of Ayutthaya as staunch enemies of the Burmese. But of
course, Ayutthaya itself had only a decade left before it too fell to the Burmese, led now by
Alaungpaya's son Hsinbyushin. As with most of the other survivors, the Mon moved down
the Chao Phraya River. Some settled on Koh Kred, about twenty kilometres north of
Bangkok, where an earlier canal cut to straighten the course of the river had created an is-
land. Here they made their own distinctive pottery from baked unglazed red clay, carved
and moulded with intricate patterns. Other Mon refugees sailed further down the river and
eventually formed a community in a small nook of Rattanakosin Island, at the junction of
Klong Lot Wat Ratchabophit and the inner moat. Mon traders would sail their boats along
