Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tually three separate markets wedged in here, although they all deal in flowers, fruit and
vegetables, and collectively Pak Klong Talat is the most important wholesale flower mar-
ket in Thailand. Dawn is the best time to visit, when the flowers arrive by boat and truck
from all over Thailand and florists come to collect their supplies for shops, stalls and mar-
kets elsewhere in the city. The people who make a living by stringing and selling flower
garlands also come here to buy sacks of jasmine and marigolds. As well as wholesale the
market here is retail, with shops and stalls in the streets and alleys, and all offering flowers
at low prices.
Shophouses built in the late nineteenth century on the site of the old pottery village.
The market stretches all the way along the riverfront to the Memorial Bridge, a dis-
tance of around 200 metres (218 yards), the bridge itself being important to the transport-
ation of market produce. On the corner of Saphan Phut Lane is a block of tall, imposing
shophouses built in the time of Rama
VII
. They are different in style to the shophouses that
were being built in Rattanakosin only a few years earlier, reflecting the changes in fashion
and building technique heralded by the 1920s. Gone are the old sloping roofs, and in has
come what must have been a very smart concrete parapet with a deck roof. The walls and
windows are largely unadorned, letting the bulk of the building with its smoothly curving
frontage speak for itself. Look a little closer and it can be seen that the design was ori-
ginally for three storeys, and that a fourth has been built up over the roof deck at a later
date. These shophouses face the piazza at which sits a statue of Rama
I
, the bridge having
been built to commemorate the 150
th
anniversary of the Chakri dynasty. The statue was
installed at the same time the bridge was opened in 1932: the design was by Prince Naris,
while the statue was moulded and cast by Corrado Feroci. It is, however, a fanciful like-
ness, as are any of the first three Chakri kings and of King Taksin, images of the Siamese
monarchs having been forbidden until the reign of Rama
IV
, the first of the great modern-
isers, when in 1856 an unknown photographer was allowed to photograph the king along-
side Queen Dhepsirindhara.
On the other side of the piazza is the approach road for the Pokklao Bridge, which was
opened to traffic in 1984, and next to this can be found a curious structure, a beautiful
