fighting in Cambodia, but he returned to Thonburi and rounded up the leaders. Chakri decided that the king had to be removed permanently. The generally accepted version of history is that Taksin was taken to Wat Arun, where he was placed inside a velvet sack and beaten to death with a scented sandalwood club, the traditional method of execution for anyone of royal bloodline, the belief being that no drop of royal blood should be spilled upon the ground. Another account says he was beheaded in front of Wichaiprasit Fort. A conspiracy theory of the time says that he faked his madness, as the country had become ungovernable and he was deeply in debt to the Chinese who had supplied much of the funding for his wars and nation building, and that he was secretly removed to a remote temple in the mountains of Nakhon Si Thammarat, where he lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1825. Whatever actually happened, the reign of King Taksin ended on 6th April 1782.
The Bangkok era
Chao Phraya Maha Chakri immediately proclaimed himself king, initially as Phra Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke, later becoming known as Rama I when the method of naming monarchs in this fashion was introduced by Rama VI. He was the founder of the Chakri dynasty that rules Thailand to this day.
Thonburi was capital of Thailand for only fifteen years, from 1767 until 1782, and Taksin was its only king. When Rama I came to the throne he was very much aware that the canal moat would not provide an effective barrier against a determined invasion by the Burmese. The area contained within the waterways was also too small for what was now a growing city. The king turned his thoughts to the land on the eastern bank of the river. There were numerous settlements and temples but they were scattered amongst the farmlands, orchards and marshy countryside. Directly opposite Thonburi the riverbank was occupied mainly by Chinese merchants and their godowns and the land was reasonably clear and dry, for the French fortifications had been extensive, and Taksin had already dug canals behind the merchant community for drainage and transportation. Enlarging these canals would form a protective moat and create an island. Predatory Burmese in the west would be kept at bay by the river, while to the east lay a broad expanse of impassable delta land known as the Sea of Mud. Heavy fortifications could be built along the river to discourage a sea-born invasion. Rama I could see that a city of similar grandeur to Ayutthaya would be able to rise from such a secure setting. The Chinese merchants were offered an area of land not far from their original settlement, and do not appear to have offered any resistance to the move. With a new capital city to be constructed on their doorstep they were probably delighted.
At the auspicious time and date of 6:45 a.m. on the 21st April 1782, the stakes were driven into the soil of Bangkok for the City Pillar, marking the official founding of the new city. Rama I gave his new capital a grand ceremonial name: Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. The longest place-name in the world, it translates as: “The City of Angels, the Great City, the Eternal Jewel City, the Impregnable City of God Indra, the Grand Capital of the World Endowed with Nine Precious Gems, the Happy City, Abounding in an Enormous Royal Palace that Resembles the Heavenly Abode where Reigns the Reincarnated God, a City given by Indra and Built by Vishnukarma”.
Foreigners, perhaps unsurprisingly, continued to use the name they had always known and which appeared on all their maps. Eventually Bangkok was registered as the official English language name. Thais call their capital Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, or more usually just Krung Thep, which translates loosely as “City of the Angels”.
A Buddha image in the grounds of a canal-side temple in Bangkok Yai.
PART I
THONBURI
These three walks will take us through Thonburi, which was briefly the capital before Bangkok was founded. We explore the southern bank of the Bangkok Yai canal, walking alongside the old coastal railway line to the former betel nut market and visiting landmarks known to Thonburi’s only monarch, King Taksin. Our second walk takes us through the old harbour district to neighbourhoods settled by the Portuguese, Hokkien Chinese and Cham Muslims, ending at a Lao community of bamboo flute makers. The third of the walks leads us through what was the fortified part of the city, taking in famous landmarks such as the Temple of the Dawn and Wat Rakhang, before visiting a small community founded by bronzesmiths who had fled the destruction of Ayutthaya, with our journey ending at a macabre museum.
WALK 1
WONG WIAN YAI
In Search of King Taksin
Starting from Wong Wian Yai Skytrain station, the walk takes us alongside the Bangkok Yai canal to the temple that is the final resting place of King Taksin.
Duration: 2 hours
Once Bangkok had been founded as the new capital of Siam, Thonburi became something of a rural backwater. A place of market gardens and canals and old temples, it snoozed all the way through the nineteenth century as the Chakri dynasty built Bangkok into a powerful city. Only in the early part of the twentieth century did the world intrude again upon Thonburi, and even then it was to use the former kingdom as a transit point. The turn of the century saw the beginning of the railway era in Siam, and to service the south a line was opened to Petchaburi in 1903, later continuing down to Butterworth, across the Malay border. As there was no bridge across the Chao Phraya, a station was built in Thonburi, next to the Bangkok Noi canal, and passengers made their way across the river by boat.
For several years the northern and southern railway systems operated independently of each other, divided by the river. As rail traffic grew, however, the decision was made to build a bridge across the river and link all the lines at a new station on the east bank next to Chinatown. The Rama VI Bridge, opening in 1927 at Bang Sue, on the northern side of the city, was Bangkok’s first river bridge. Thonburi railway station continued to operate, serving local passengers and also the new railway line that was built to Kanchanaburi, in the west, but the southern railway line now bypassed Thonburi, looping around its northern edge. Five years later, in 1932, the second bridge opened. The Memorial Bridge carries the roadway across the river and has its Thonburi landing near to the mouth of the Bangkok Yai canal. Here, two traffic circles were laid out to link eleven new road projects in Thonburi that in turn connect to highways leading west, south and east.
With a suburban railway service and the laying out of the roads came commercial and residential development, and in recent years the BTS Skytrain has vaulted the river and planted commuter stations, but Thonburi has obstinately refused to follow the same style of growth as Bangkok. No central business district has evolved here, the only international hotels are a smattering along the riverbank, and the shops are for the locals. Thonburi remained officially an independent city and province until it was merged into Bangkok in 1971. Today, although Bangkok residents refer to the west bank in general as Thonburi, the name is officially affixed to only one small district, or khet, of which Bangkok has fifty.
Taksin and his brief kingdom could easily have been forgotten were it not for a revival of nationalism immediately following World War II., and the change of name from Siam to Thailand. Wong Wian Yai, the larger of the two traffic circles, had been a blank traffic island for twenty years. There is in existence a black-and-white aerial photograph taken in 1950, and the only features on the island are the pathways that cross it and what appears to be a tall lamppost in the centre. But the island stands at a point near the old harbour, and outside what had been the fortified walls of Thonburi, and Taksin would have mustered his troops on this ground. Part of the nationalist campaign during this time of great turbulence in Thailand, with a military government newly installed, a changed constitution and a great deal of popular unrest, was to rehabilitate the reputation of King Taksin. The government decided to erect a
