It was a fine, sunny day and our small party boarded the long-tail boat waiting for us on Khlong Maha Sawat for a leisurely trip along this 153-year-old canal through Nakhon Chaisi district in Nakhon Pathom. It turned out to be a perfect escape from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, a great method of unwinding and experiencing the simple pleasures of life in these parts. We passed picturesque orchid and lotus farms, verdant orchards and field after field of ripening golden rice. Along the way we spotted a few men fishing desultorily, small children frolicking in the pellucid water and a woman absorbed in washing clothes.
Connecting Bangkok Noi Canal and the Tha Chin (Nakhon Chaisi) River, the 27km-long Maha Sawat Canal was created as a shortcut to Phra Pathom Chedi and to open up a large swathe of unoccupied land for development. In 1852, King Rama IV ordered the restoration of Phra Pathom Chedi and assigned Somdej Chao Phraya Maha Prayoonrawong and his son, Chao Phraya Thipakornwong Maha Kosathibodi (Kham Bunnag), to supervise the digging of the Chedi Bucha and Maha Sawat canals. The digging of Maha Sawat by hired Chinese labourers took three years (1860-1862) and cost around 80,000 baht. In 1877, King Rama V travelled down this canal on his way to Saiyok Waterfall in Kanchanaburi, making a note of his journey.
We stopped to buy orchid plants from a farm (100 to 200 baht each), then snacked on crispy rice crackers and dried fruit at the community learning centre at Ban Saladin. Later, we spent an hour observing farm labourers at work and then enjoyed some local treats for lunch at one of the lotus plantations in the vicinity.
Pathum Sawatnam has been cultivating rice in this area for many years.
"The soil along this canal is good for growing rice and most of the farmland here is paddy fields," the grizzled veteran told us. "There are also a number of lotus farms plus orchards, especially pomelo orchards. Pomelos from the Wat Suwannaram community are said to be the tastiest and they sell like hot cakes."
The canal today known as Maha Sawat came into existence because of King Rama IV's piety and his interest in preserving Phra Pathom Chedi, a huge pagoda in Nakhon Pathom which dates back to the Dvaravati period. After it opened to traffic in 1862, the king named it Khlong Maha Sawasdee and he and his entourage often used it as a shortcut to get to the ancient Buddhist monument. He later presented more than 20,000 rai (3,200 hectares) of land along its banks to his children and most of this is still being used for agricultural purposes to this day.
The new canal helped to relieve crowding on nearby Khlong Yong and, apart from the transportation of people, it was used for ferrying rice, sugar, bananas, coconuts and sand from Nakhon Chaisi to the Chao Phraya River. The sugar was mostly headed for a whisky distillery in Bang Yi Khan.
People gradually moved into the area. The first batch of residents came from old communities along the Nakhon Chaisi River, including Song Khanong, Homkkred, Bang Toey and Don Wai; others came all the way from Nonthaburi and Bangkok itself. The main attraction was that land on the royal estates could be leased to grow rice at relatively low rates.
As hamlets mushroomed, seven canalside pavilions were built. These sala were numbered (Sala Nueng (1), Sala Song (2), Sala Sam (3), etc), but some were also given secondary names because of associations with a local activity or some other special feature. The aforementioned Saladin was an alternative name for Sala Jed (7). Sala Si (4) was also known as Sala Klang (central or middle pavilion). Sala Ha (5), near the railway line in Thawi Watthana district, was once used for funerals, hence its alternative name: Sala Thamsop (from sop meaning "corpse"). Situated in Tambon Salaya in Nakhon Pathom's Buddha Monthon district, Sala Hok (6) was also commonly known as Salaya because there used to be stone tablets here on which were inscribed recipes for the concocting of herbal medicine (ya). Sadly none of the pavilions have survived to the present day.
References to the lifestyle of people living along this man-made waterway crop up in Niras Phra Pathom, a collection of travel poems penned in 1874 by Luang Chakkrapanee (Ruek) and inspired by a journey he made from Bangkok to Phra Pathom Chedi via Chedi Bucha and Maha Sawat canals. He described communities on both banks of Khlong Maha Sawat and noted that houses tended to be erected quite far apart from each other. He mentions a Mon woman he sees bathing in the canal near Sala Klang, a female farm labourer with "a dark complexion and a kind heart" at Sala Ha and a profusion of birds flocking around the Sala Hok.
Wat Suwannaram (not to be confused with the royal temple in Thon Buri) has a pier on the canal from which boats can be hired. For about five decades now, this wat has been the site of an unusual annual ceremony called tak bat thong nam (alms-giving on the stream). Villagers congregate here early in the morning on the full-moon day of the 12th lunar month to give alms to monks sitting on boats. The underlying significance of the ritual is to propitiate Phra Mae Khongkha (a water goddess, possibly Hindu in origin, belief in whom predates Buddhism), make merit for all those who have drowned in the canal over the years and to remind parents to supervise their children while they are swimming in the khlong.
As of 2010, 7,753 people or 3,468 families were registered as resident in Tambon Maha Sawat. While the majority of them still make a living from farming, they no longer live in thatched-roof houses and depend on row-boats to get around. However, it is still quite a common sight in these parts to see people travelling by water or buying goods from vendors who peddle their wares from boats.
"Here, we live simple yet happy lives," said Pathum, the rice farmer we met earlier. "We can still bathe and swim in the canal because the water is very clean."
For more information, visit www.mahasawat.go.th. Those interested in ecotourism activities along the canal should give Pathum a ring on 081-912-0723.
Expanses of white and red lotus blooms are a common sight as one travels along Khlong Maha Sawat. They are cultivated in large ponds adjacent to the canal and are picked every morning by market gardeners paddling little wooden boats. Most of the cut blooms are destined for the wholesale flower market at Pak Khlong Talat in Bangkok.
Things to do on a lotus-farm tour — get a lesson in paddling one of the little boats the farmers use to pick the flowers; learn how to fold lotus petals into the shape of a rose; lunch on khao hor bai bua (steamed lotus-leaf parcels stuffed with a savoury mix of boiled rice, lotus seeds, pork sausage and salted egg); buy a big bunch of lotus blooms for a mere 30 baht.
This orchid farm covers an area of 16 rai and specialises in two genera, Vanda and Dendrobium. Only Dendrobium can be exported since members of the Vanda genus are regarded as protected species. A single Dendrobium order can consist of tens of thousands of plant sections; they must be cut early in the morning and then carefully packed for transportation. Both types of orchid have a life span of five years.
When coming to Khlong Maha Sawat, tourists can visit rice fields and fruit orchards with various famous strains of pomelo trees, including khao thongdee , khao namphung , khao hom, khao paen and khao phuang , many kinds of mango trees, the luang bang toei and khiew chang khot strains of jackfruit trees. To experience the farmers’ simple lifestyle, they can choose to take a ride on a makeshift farm vehicle (rot e-den ) which costs 50 baht per trip per vehicle.
At the community learning centre at Ban Saladin, visitors can observe the steps involved in preserving various types of farm produce, taste the famous khaotang (brown rice crackers) with a topping of either sesame seeds or sweetened sliced pork, shop for handicrafts (including natural brooms and objects woven from coconut leaves) and preserves — made of everything from mangoes, papaya and guava to hog plums (makok ) and star gooseberries (mayom).
