Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the southern railway line now bypassed Thonburi, looping around its northern edge. Five
years later, in 1932, the second bridge opened. The Memorial Bridge carries the roadway
across the river and has its Thonburi landing near to the mouth of the Bangkok Yai canal.
Here, two traffic circles were laid out to link eleven new road projects in Thonburi that in
turn connect to highways leading west, south and east.
With a suburban railway service and the laying out of the roads came commercial and
residential development, and in recent years the
BTS
Skytrain has vaulted the river and
planted commuter stations, but Thonburi has obstinately refused to follow the same style
of growth as Bangkok. No central business district has evolved here, the only internation-
al hotels are a smattering along the riverbank, and the shops are for the locals. Thonburi
remained officially an independent city and province until it was merged into Bangkok in
1971. Today, although Bangkok residents refer to the west bank in general as Thonburi,
the name is officially affixed to only one small district, or
khet
, of which Bangkok has fifty.
Taksin and his brief kingdom could easily have been forgotten were it not for a revival
of nationalism immediately following World War
II
., and the change of name from Siam
to Thailand. Wong Wian Yai, the larger of the two traffic circles, had been a blank traffic
island for twenty years. There is in existence a black-and-white aerial photograph taken in
1950, and the only features on the island are the pathways that cross it and what appears to
be a tall lamppost in the centre. But the island stands at a point near the old harbour, and
outside what had been the fortified walls of Thonburi, and Taksin would have mustered
his troops on this ground. Part of the nationalist campaign during this time of great tur-
bulence in Thailand, with a military government newly installed, a changed constitution
and a great deal of popular unrest, was to rehabilitate the reputation of King Taksin. The
government decided to erect a statue and place it in Wong Wian Yai. The statue was un-
veiled in 1954, and a ceremony of homage takes place every year on 28
th
December, the
anniversary of Taksin's coronation.
