Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WALK 3
BANGKOK NOI
Money Town
This walk takes us through the earliest part of the Thonburi settlement, when it was a cus-
toms port and garrison town for the capital of Ayutthaya, further upriver.
Duration: 4 hours
The earliest maps of Thonburi, dating from the latter half of the seventeenth century,
show a very modest sized township. King Narai's Wichaiprasit Fort, built in the 1660s
and expanded by the French under the naval officer Chevalier de Forbin, sits formidably at
the mouth of Klong Bangkok Yai, a watchful presence for ships heading upriver to Ayut-
thaya. With the fort at its southeast corner, a rectangle of fortifications spreads back almost
as far as Klong Bangkok Noi, and outside of this rectangle the land is marked as being agri-
cultural. On the east bank of the river, the Bangkok side, the corresponding fort built by the
French is an enormous star-shape, and outside of this, again, the land is marked as farms
and orchards. Clearly, Money Town had been essentially for officialdom and the military,
while the community that depended upon it had lived largely outside the walls, on the river
and alongside the canals, for this was the era when ordinary folk dwelled upon the water
rather than on the usually marshy land. When King Taksin established Thonburi as his cap-
ital he took the original fortified area and strengthened it by having a canal dug as a moat,
the southern end connecting to Klong Bangkok Yai next to Wat Molilokkayaram, and the
waterway passing behind Wat Arun, running parallel to the river until it reached Klong
Bangkok Noi, at Wat Amarin. These three temples had all existed since the Ayutthaya era,
with no one really knowing when they were founded, and indeed at this period they were all
known by different names to those of today. Taksin made this area his royal court, building
his palace directly next to Wichaiprasit Fort, with Wat Arun as his immediate neighbour on
the other side. As a protection from marauders, he had the safest place in the kingdom.
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