Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In addition to being the home of the embassies and the port, this stretch of Charoen
Krung started to become a desirable residential neighbourhood for Europeans, especially
with the advent of the trams (there being a first-class section in the tram, in which ladies
were required to wear hats). Siphraya Cross evolved into a fashionable European shopping
centre.
The banks were in this area, all three of them (Hongkong & Shanghai, Chartered, and
Siam Commercial), and there was a hospital, founded by the French. J Antonio, the pho-
tographer whose work is an important record of Bangkok in Rama
V
is time, and who
wrote the classic
1904Traveller'sGuidetoBangkokandSiam
, had his studio here. The
offices of the
BangkokTimes
, founded in 1887, were here. Kiam Hua Heng, astounding
everyone by importing the recently invented Singer sewing machines, became the leading
dry goods store. In the 1920s the Chirathivat family, Chinese immigrants from Hainan,
opened a small shop on the corner of Captain Bush Lane, selling international newspa-
pers and magazines. Named Central Trading Store, it grew into Thailand's largest retail
conglomerate, responsible today for all those Central and Robinson's department stores,
all those Centara hotels, and much else besides. Indian and Burmese gemstone traders
moved in and this became the city's gemstone centre, a position it retains to this day, with
gems and jewellery being one of the country's prime industries. The Indian presence here
remains a strong one, with Indian trading companies, spice shops and restaurants, and
Indian ownership of the Holiday Inn. The 1920s saw the first serious challenge to The Ori-
