Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
remover of bad fate, is staged here, a ten-day event that on the final day sees this part of
Silom closed to traffic and the streets decked with yellow garlands and candles, while the
image of Sri Maha Mariamman is carried in a procession along the road.
Directly opposite Wat Khaek is a lane named Soi Pradit, and here can be found a com-
munity of Muslims originally from Indonesia. They have been in Thailand a long time,
having originally settled in Ayutthaya. The Meera Suddin Mosque rises up amidst the
small wet market that makes this a crowded thoroughfare, and has its origins in a timber
house that was converted into a mosque in 1912. In 1983 a Muslim businessman named
Manit Hadji Muhamud Maidin built the present structure on the land, using his own
funds, and it remains today a privately maintained mosque, independent from the Reli-
gious Affairs Department.
Continue on Soi Pradit and you will emerge onto Surawong, with the graceful rotunda
of the Neilson Hays Library on the corner, half buried behind green foliage. There can be
few more tranquil places anywhere in the city for book lovers to sit and read, and along
with the lending library there is a reference section that includes a selection of topics on
Bangkok and Thailand, tucked inside an ancient cabinet. In 1869, a year into the reign
of Rama
V
, the Ladies Bazaar Association in Bangkok, a charitable organisation founded
three years previously, founded the Bangkok Ladies Library Association to meet the read-
ing needs of the increasing English-speaking community. he topics were initially stored
in a private residence on the Baptist compound, and later they were removed to the vestry
of the Protestant Union Chapel in Charoen Krung Road, where they were stored rent-
free until 1900. Jennie Neilson was a Danish Protestant missionary who arrived in Siam
in 1881. She married Dr Thomas Heyward Hays, an American who was head of the Roy-
al Thai Navy Hospital, in 1887, and they made their home at Silom Road. Jennie became
actively involved in the Bangkok Ladies Library Association, which became more costly
and difficult to administer after 1900, when the Protestant Chapel moved and temporary
accommodation had to be found. First of all, the topics were stored in the house of a law-
yer on Charoen Krung, and then in 1909 they were moved to a large room on the upper
level of the premises of Falck & Beidek, in Chartered Bank Lane. In 1914, Jennie became
president of what by now was named the Bangkok Library Association, and the decision
was made to buy a plot of land on Surawong Road, where a modest building was erected
to act as a permanent library. In 1920, Jennie died suddenly of cholera. Dr Hays felt that
her devotion to the library should be commemorated, and he commissioned Italian archi-
tect Mario Tamagno to design a building that he then gifted to the Association. he new
building was opened on 26
th
June 1922. Tamagno, already renowned for other works in
