Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ing the pedal for the up ramp. For the taxi driver who spends most of his day in a semi-
mobile carpark, it must be exhilarating. For the passenger who, to take a random example,
has just drunk a large cappuccino at his local Starbucks, it can, however, be alarming. At
such a time the passenger may turn his eyes to the horizon, like a seasick sailor, and if
he looks towards the river he will see a remarkable sight: a long wall of almost unbroken
green jungle. This only begins at the upper end of Rama
III
, roughly from the SV City com-
plex, and with almost no riverside temples from here on, as the river flows into the indus-
trialised port district at Klong Toei, there are few ground-level vantage points. Perhaps
the best place to view the river is from the mouth of the Chong Nonsi canal, where the
curious observer will be rewarded with a Conradesque view of coastal freighters chugging
past against a jungle backdrop, heading to and from one of the small jetties, or further up
to the shipyard at the Krung Thep Bridge; and he may wonder just where the city has gone.
A map will soon provide the answer. The river here describes an enormous loop that
doubles back upon itself and almost touches at the district named Phra Pradaeng. The ef-
fect is to create what is effectively an island in the middle of the city. A small canal, Klong
Lat Pho, was cut in 1628 to allow light craft to bypass the loop, but the angle of the cut-
ting was such that the river flow could not inundate it, as happened further upstream at
Thonburi. Klong Toei, which occupies most of the loop on the Bangkok side, had long
been a port town, going back centuries to when the ocean came a lot further inland, and
so this part of the river was important to shipping. The cutting of the Hua Lampong canal
during the time of Rama
IV
gave the port even more importance, connecting it both with
the city centre and the waterway that led through to the rich rice-growing province of
Chachoengsao. It is from the lower end of this canal that Klong Toei takes its name: the
southern end of the canal became known for the pandan plants,
toei
, that grew along the
waterside. Klong Toei was developed as a modern port starting from 1938, but its limited
capacity for heavy shipping and the traffic chaos caused by trailer trucks on land resulted
in the founding of Laem Chabang deep-sea port in Chonburi province early in the 1980s.
Amongst all this volume of trade and encroachment of human habitation on both the
Bangkok and the Samut Prakan sides of the river, the land within the loop has remained
almost totally undeveloped. Referred to either as the Phra Pradaeng peninsula, or more
often Bang Krachao (although the Thais refer to it as Krapow Moo, which means “pig's
stomach”), this is a huge area of green countryside in which quiet villages snooze down
peaceful lanes, where many people travel by bicycle, and where small temples are buried
away amongst the greenery. he visitor could easily imagine that he is upcountry was it
