Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and European products from Singapore and Batavia. Junks running the China trade would
make only one voyage a year, taking advantage of the southwest monsoon in June to sail
from Bangkok, and of the northwest monsoon to return late in January. Bradley writes of
a flotilla of sixty to eighty junks moored in the river from February to June, forming two
lines in a huge floating bazaar. Each of the ships was freighted with the goods of several
merchants, who would display their products on the deck until everything was sold.
The Portuguese had been in treaty relations with Siam since 1820, but very little came
in direct: most of the trade was with Portuguese territories such as Goa, Macau and East
Timor. A community of Muslim merchants was shipping between Bombay and Bangkok
under the British flag, but only at the rate of three or four ships a year. Twenty years
after Bradley's observations, the situation and the riverscape were to change dramatically.
Foreign trade now flourished, as did foreign fashions. Now the junks rode at anchor be-
side tall-masted sailing ships and the early steamers. Godowns and sawmills were built
at the river's edge, their memories enshrined in names such as Soi Rong Luey Misglug
(Klugg's Sawmill Lane) and Soi Rong Luey Asiatic (East Asiatic Sawmill Lane), which sur-
vive today.
Rama
III
, who reigned from 1824 to 1851, foresaw that the supremacy of the Chinese
junk was not going to last for ever. The king had in his youth been given responsibility
for foreign trade and relations, and when he became king he devoted much of his time to
both the politics and the mechanics of international trade. He is known to Thai history
as the Father of Trade. Steamships were faster and more efficient than sailing vessels. Ch-
ina under the Qing Dynasty was weakening, and the strength of the Western countries
was growing. The king felt that a reminder of how Siam's prosperity was achieved was
needed for the generations to come. On the bank of the river, shortly before ships reached
Bangkok, was a village named Ban Thawai, or Tavoy Village. Populated by people origin-
ally from Tavoy, in Burma, the settlement had a market for trading water buffalo. There
was a temple here of unknown age named Wat Khok Kwai, which translates as “Temple
of the Buffalo Pen”. During the reign of Rama
I
the temple was accorded royal status and
renamed Wat Khok Krabue,
krabue
being a more formal word for buffalo. In the temple
grounds, directly on the riverbank and visible to all passing ships, Rama
III
built a chapel
that is a stone replica of a Chinese junk.
Yan
in Thai means “craft” or “conveyance”, and
nawa
is a vessel or boat, and so the temple was renamed yet again, this time as Wat Yan-
nawa.
The building of Charoen Krung Road had the odd effect of turning Wat Yannawa
around by 180 degrees. Whereas the temple had originally faced the river, now a large gate
