Our capital is changing at an ever-increasing rate, but is it really getting better?
Steve Van Beek
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| The Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo now (this photo) and then (below). |
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The best-selling book, Bangkok Then and Now, explores the evolution of the capital from a quiet backwater to a major metropolis. Photos taken in 1900 are juxtaposed with those taken in 1999. In some instances, little has changed. In other cases, the modern photos bear virtually no similarity to the old ones. The pictures are accompanied by text that recreates city life in 1900, and are augmented by Bangkok Times newspaper stories that convey the flavour of the period. They reveal that the things 1900-era citizens loved and hated about the city were little changed a century later.
Published in 1999, Bangkok Then and Now was an instant hit, a surprise to everyone associated with it. Year after year, we just kept printing it and Asia Books kept selling it.
It might have continued its extraordinary run forever, but last year we looked around Bangkok and realised that the book was no longer an accurate mirror. Too much had changed. Buildings and landmarks had been erased. The structure and essential feel of the city had been altered. If we wanted the book to be an honest reflection, we had to take a fresh look and produce a new edition.
Where to start? The basic text was still solid but needed updating, which meant expanding the book. But it was the outdated photos that were the glaring problem. In many instances, traditional establishments had either been razed or transformed. A century-old noodle shop had become a convenience store; a venerable old town restaurant had been refurbished as a watch emporium.
In some places, vantage points for "now" matching shots for "then" photos had become available. We'd also found better copies of old photos, as well as some pictures we'd never seen before, many of them sent to us by readers who had stumbled across them in family albums.
In the end, we replaced 68 photos, but more importantly, we gained a new perspective on how the city came to be. The exercise also raised some interesting questions about where Bangkok might be headed and whether the new direction contributed to improving the quality of life that citizens should demand of a city has arrived at this economic prominence.
THEN, NOW AND THE FUTURE
Armed with three vantage points - 1900, 2000 and today - we have a triangulation that enables us to peer into the future. To do that, we need to understand where it all began by taking a running start from 1782, the year Bangkok was established as Thailand's capital.
In its first century, Bangkok comprised a riverside royal enclave bordered by the river and a city wall that embraced the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo. Its initial growth took place along a narrow strip that hugged the eastern riverbank north and south of the Grand Palace. While many nobles continued to call Thon Buri "home", the bulk of Bangkok's population lived just south of the city in Chinatown and in small craft villages east of the newly-erected city walls. Over time, these settlements gradually merged as former rice fields were turned into house gardens. The e'lite lived in several districts. Almost from the city's founding, princely houses lined Phra Athit Road. After 1863, wealthy Bangkokians began building homes along the lower end of the newly-paved Charoen Krung Road, an area known as Bang Kho Laem.
The first regal venture beyond the city walls came with the construction in 1900 of Vimarnmek Palace as a pastoral retreat for King Chulalongkorn. It was linked to the city by the newly-laid, tree-lined Ratchadamnoen Avenue.
Farther east, Sapatoom district, the jungled countryside retreat favoured by King Mongkut (1851-1868), soon sprouted grand mansions. Today's lone survivor from this era, Wat Pathum Wanaram on Rama I Road, is now dwarfed by CentralWorld Plaza and the Siam Paragon/Siam Centre/Discovery Centre complex. Phaya Thai Road, running between Discovery Centre and Victory Monument, was also an exclusive residential area.
According to contemporary accounts, the future lay to the north. An article in the February, 1900 Bangkok Times predicted that "the best residential quarter of Bangkok will be found [along Phahon Yothin Road], probably in the comparatively near future". It would be a slow evolution, spurred by the road to Don Muang (where hunters shot birds in the marshlands) whose fields were paved to became Bangkok's International Airport in 1914. Even slower was the settlement along the rural rice field road known as Sukhumvit, which carried travellers to the seaside spa at Si Racha. Both districts would experience their primary growth in the 1950s, followed in 1960 by the opening of New Phetchaburi Road that cut through Pratunam Market, one of the city's biggest bazaars.
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In 1900, the remnants of the city wall were being dismantled as it was an impediment to traffic, and shortly after canals were filled in to make road. Khlong Hua Lamphong, the last major canal to be buried, became Rama IV Road in 1955.
Midway through the 19th century, King Mongkut decreed that anyone financing the excavation of four parallel canals running northeast from Charoen Krung Road would be deeded the land on either side. Soon, the plots along Sathon, Silom, Surawong and Si Phraya were covered in vegetable gardens with windmills (Silom) drawing water from the canals to irrigate them. The upper end of Silom at Sala Daeng (Red Pavilion) was a thriving cattle market.>>
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