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the newer wall. When the building was first erected, some wag plugged this gap with a
coffin lid, which remained there for years until it rotted away.
On the other side of the lane is a Chinese burial ground, the graves packed in close to-
gether, the land flooded with goo and patrolled by pi-dogs with a distinctly chippy attitude
to anyone attempting a short-cut. A few families live in shacks on the edge of the ground,
and are only marginally friendlier towards strangers than the dogs. A Buddhist graveyard
lies next to this, and is now largely pressed into service as a carpark. Beyond this there
used to be yet another Chinese burial ground, but it was cleared a few years ago to make
way for a development that includes a hotel, shops and office space. So much for the Thais'
fear of ghosts.
There are very few buildings still standing from the early days of Silom Road, those
that are being generally private residences hidden behind high walls in the back sois , or
pressed into service as charming restaurants. Some masterpieces have sadly been lost,
such as Baan Surasana, which stood on the site of the Bangkok Bank. The bank had been
formed in 1944, when the Japanese occupation of Siam resulted in the closure of the Brit-
ish, European and American banks. A group of Thai courtiers and businessmen founded
the bank, which was initially operated out of two adjacent shophouses in Chinatown. It
is now Thailand's largest bank. When the head offices were completed on Silom in 1980,
the building was, at twenty-five storeys, for some years the tallest tower in Thailand. It
just topped the twenty-three-storey, 82-metre-high Dusit Thani Hotel, completed in 1970
and itself only slightly smaller than the Chokchai Building on Sukhumvit Road, which had
opened the year before as Bangkok's first high-rise office building.
The Dusit Thani, which took its name from the fanciful miniature city created by Rama
VI , was a landmark in more ways than one. Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui had opened her
first hotel, the Princess, on Oriental Avenue at Charoen Krung Road directly after World
War II . By the 1960s it was becoming apparent that tourism represented a significant fu-
ture industry for Thailand, and Thanpuying Chanut, who by now had seen first-hand how
top hotels overseas operated, decided to build a first-class international standard hotel in
the centre of Bangkok. It thereby became one of the first new-generation five-star hotels
to open in the city, along with the Siam Intercontinental on Siam Square, now demol-
ished, the President on Ploenchit, which is now the Holiday Inn, and the Hilton on Silom,
now also a Holiday Inn. The Dusit Thani was built on the site of a mansion, and despite
its height was constructed without the use of a tower crane, there being none in existen-
ce in Bangkok at that time. Ropes, pulleys, ramps, and baskets of building materials were
the methods used, with the workforce being housed in the basement as the building grew
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