Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WALK 14
CHINATOWN 2
On the Waterfront
With its busy shophouses and godowns, its shrines and its narrow lanes, this area of Chin-
atown along the riverbank is the most picturesque part of the district granted to the
Chinese by Rama
I
.
Duration: 2 hours
Ratchawong Pier is the point at which the Chinese immigrants landed in those early
days before the city had spread eastwards and it also marked the northern end of the
Chinese harbour, being the main port for junks plying to and from China and from Chon-
buri, Surat Thani and other Siamese provinces. The condition of the riverfront in the pre-
road days may be imagined from the original name for the nearby Wat Bophit Phimuk,
which was Wat Lain, or the Temple of Mud. This was a civil temple, so it probably had no
formal name, and it had been built of timber during the late Ayutthaya period. Rama
I
gave
the temple its present name. During the reign of Rama
II
the temple gained some notoriety
when a cholera epidemic killed a large number of people and the corpses had to be piled up
in the courtyard. Rama
III
replaced the wooden structure with a stone building, and Rama
IV
added a teak pavilion, decorated with the king's emblem, the crown guarded by mythical
animals. Today, Wat Bophit Phimuk is a royal temple, second grade.
Road building in Bangkok did not start until the 1860s, and even then it was slow to
progress as most commercial needs were still served by the river and the canals, rice and
timber forming the bulk of exports. Construction of the roads began in earnest only in the
1890s, as international trade grew in the wake of the Bowring Treaty, and rice mills, ship-
ping, warehousing, trading houses, factories and distribution centres all began to require
more efficient transport. Sampeng and Bangrak were amongst the first districts to have
modern road systems, the roads being built initially as feeders for the canals and the river,
