Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ure and shopping complex, a commendable venture that combines conservation with
modern needs, and opens up the riverfront to the public.
Headquarters of the East Asiatic Company, whose founder also built The Oriental.
Asiatique is operated by the same people who operate OP Place, a lovely old building
dating from 1905 that stands on the remnants of Chartered Bank Lane, and which houses
antique shops, art galleries and boutiques. Elsewhere in this little parcel of land there is
a graceful villa from the reign of Rama
VI
, which houses The Oriental's China House res-
taurant, and some original shophouses, one of which is home to Tongue Thai, a restaurant
noted for its Thai food and Old Bangkok ambience. The area is, however, disfigured by the
expanse of tottering corrugated fencing that encloses the land behind Thai Home Indus-
tries, a series of handicraft shops housed in former monks' quarters. This has been here
for countless years. Why it cannot at least be tidied up, I really do not know.
The East Asiatic Company building is divided into two blocks, connected by an en-
closed bridge, and passing through the passageway one is in a tiny and completely en-
closed township, that of the Catholic community that has grown up around Assumption
Cathedral. Here is a beautifully proportioned square such as might exist in any French
cathedral city, as Assumption owes its origins to French missionaries. The Roman Cath-
olic Archdiocese of Bangkok can be traced back to 1662, when the Vicariate Apostolic of
Siam was created. The first French missionary active in Siam had been a Franciscan, Bon-
ferre, who had sailed up to Ayutthaya from Goa on board a Portuguese ship in 1550. A
small Catholic community grew and after the granting of the Vicariate Apostolic by Al-
exander
VII
, Siam, which by this time was a great power in the East, gave shelter to Viet-
namese, Japanese and other Christians fleeing their own countries. In 1673 a bishop, Fath-
er Louis Laneau, was appointed, and the church entered the spiritual care of the Society of
Foreign Missions. Father Laneau was head of the Roman Catholic mission for Indochina,
and was based at Ayutthaya, where King Narai was sympathetic to the Catholic Church.
Despite the uprising against the Europeans in the wake of the 1688 Siege of Bangkok, and
the destruction of Ayutthaya by the Burmese almost a century later, the Catholic Church
