Rain clouds dye the sky dark grey and the afternoon weather turns hot and humid. Female Myanmar workers, with hair knots and colourful tube skirts, rush for shelter when raindrops start to blanket the town.
Motorcycle riders scoot to the pier where the ferry is about to leave. When the last passenger boards, the ferry roars and makes its way to another side of the Tha Chin River.
From the ferry, I look around and spot Chinese shrines scattered on both sides of the river. Around the pier, many shops display Chinese signs and names.
“Tha Chalom and Mahachai once were dominated by the Chinese, including my grandfather. That is the reason the river got this name,” said Alisa Soyphet, 81, a Tha Chalom native.
“In the past, it was the liveliest port town in this area. Grocery shops lined the road. People rowed their boats here to shop for dried seafood, fruit and vegetables. Students from nearby communities attended the schools here,” Alisa added, recalling her younger days.
Tha Chalom is a peaceful enclave in Muang district of Samut Sakhon. Prosperous fisheries make it a community of wealth. Stroll around and you will find yourself among beautiful traditional Thai houses built from teak, gingerbread houses, and many elegant homes lining narrow Thawai Road.
“Thawai” means offering something to the King or a monk. The locals contributed the land to King Rama V, who made Tha Chalom the country’s first municipality.
“Tha Chalom people live extraordinary lives. Many residents are state officers and they have relocated to Bangkok, so most houses you see are empty. The community is now dominated by foreign labourers,” she said. “If I do not welcome Myanmar renters to stay in my home, it would be impossible to find any clients.”
Roaming the community, I find Tha Chalom a quiet place filled with a nostalgic atmosphere. Old houses and Ban Laem Temple with its wooden ubosot stand in tranquility. A handful of shops offer sun-dried seafood. Before darkness falls, most houses are closed and the town is blanketed in silence.
On the eastern side of Tha Chin River, Mahachai remains vibrant.
Thousands of labourers, locals, merchants and tourists roam the market looking for a mouth-watering dinner. Late at night, the area is at its busiest when the fish market opens. Merchants offer exciting catches of the day, ranging from mackerel to huge groupers.
Squid and cuttlefish, rays, crabs, shrimps, mussels and anything you may want from the sea is available here.
“Mahachai has plenty of seafood, but you cannot find ready-to-eat seafood at the stalls or in the market. It is too easy to find and we all get bored with it,” Endoo Chobchuen, Alisa’s daughter, explained while accompanying me to explore the town.
The abundant seafood attracts people from the food industry to Mahachai as well. Besides hundreds of factories that supply ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat food to the world, there are hundreds of freezing warehouses, too. Most labourers here come from Myanmar.
Last year, there were around 200,000 registered Myanmar labourers in Mahachai, while the local population is only 440,000.
I seek shelter at the riverside City Pillar Shrine as a big fishing boat passes by with sailors on board wishing for a safe trip back home.
When the rain stops I get back on the ferry to Tha Chalom, a peaceful enclave in the heart of bustling Samut Sakhon.
Wat Krokkrak has a unique principal Buddha statue, wearing sunglasses. The story has it that many people suffered from pink-eye so they prayed to the Buddha image and were cured. They later came back to pay homage and applied gold leaf on the eye of the Buddha image. So the abbot, who was afraid the Buddha image would be blinded, used this trick to stop the practice.
Though the City Pillar Shrine is in the Chinese style, the statue is actually carved from wood in the Thai style. In the past, fishermen whose wishes to get rich were fulfilled would come back and pay tribute by applying opium to the statue’s lips.
Passengers embark the Mahachai-Tha Chalom ferry. The service runs 24-hours to accommodate workers in the fish markets and food factories.
