Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WALK 21
PATHUM WAN 2
The Lotus Forest
Walking through what was once rich agricultural land, our route takes us past a royal
palace and through Bangkok's prime shopping district to a neighbourhood of small Hindu
shrines, ending at the city's first public park.
Duration: 4 hours
The Elephant Head Bridge, adorned on all four corners with elephant head pilasters,
carries Phayathai Road over the Saen Saeb canal. At the foot of the bridge, and run-
ning almost to Siam Square, is a high wall pierced by a single gate. The enormous trees that
shade the wall indicate a sylvan land away from the mad rush of traffic, but there is no sign
at the gate as to what lies beyond.
The official name of the bridge is Saphan Chalerm Lar 56, and it was built in 1908, the
name commemorating the fifty-sixth birthday of Rama
V
, who had built a bridge every year
since 1894, out of his own funds, to mark his birthday. It is the fifteenth of the seventeen
“Chalerm” bridges built during the king's reign, the series ceasing with his death, although
Rama
VI
followed the policy for a number of years with the Charoen series, until he ran
out of places to build them. Thereafter the king donated birthday funds to hospital build-
ing. The Elephant Head Bridge has been widened in recent years and is no longer quite
the whimsical structure it was, but it is nonetheless one of only three remaining Chalerm
bridges: one crossing the Saen Saeb canal a little further down at Ratchadamri Road, an
original but plainer structure, and the third, 53, an even more modest bridge directly under
the Saphan Taksin Skytrain station at Charoen Krung Road.
Saen Saeb canal was dug by order of Rama
III
during a conflict between Siam and Vi-
etnam, who were fighting over Cambodian territory. The canal, which took three years to
