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When Rama IV built the third and final moat around Bangkok, he ordered the construction of five forts along the canal and also the building of a fort on the Thonburi bank, thereby forming a strong line of defence against any sea-borne invasion. Pong Patchamit Fort was built at the inlet of the San canal, the waterway from which the district derives its name, and it was directly opposite to the fort on the opposite bank that guarded the entrance to the new moat. Three years later, in 1855, the Bowring Treaty was signed and Siam opened to foreign trade. Steam ships began replacing Chinese junks and foreign shipping began to crowd into the harbour. In the reign of Rama V, the Harbour Department installed a signal flagpole at Pong Patchamit Fort where flags were hoisted to indicate the owners of the trading vessels that were arriving or departing. During Rama VI’s reign the signal flag was moved downriver to Klong Toei, and the flagpole at the fort was changed to indicate weather conditions that were provided by the Meteorological Department. Later, when the weather forecasting system was modernised, the signal flag method ceased. The mast however remains, as does part of the fort. The Fine Arts Department rescued what was left in 1949. Unless the visitor knows it is there, he or she will never find it, because the fort is hidden away behind the Klong San District Office. Enter Soi Lat Ya 21, the lane beside the mast, and walk through the District Office compound. There is a flight of steps leading up to the ramparts, and a small garden with stone seats.
On the other side of the mast is the Taksin Hospital, and the lane alongside here, Soi Lat Ya 17, leads between old timbered houses to a tiny canal. On its bank is Wat Thong Noppakhun, a temple of unknown age, in whose forecourt is a stone yannawa, an ocean-going Chinese ship. About seven metres long, painted cream and red, and with a bodhi tree for a mast, the vessel carries an inscription in Thai that commemorates the arrival of Buddhist monks from China and Japan. The vessel is a shrine, with offerings made at the base of the tree, and directly behind the rudder is a single Chinese grave, encased in plaster, where offerings are also made. The temple is believed to pre-date the Bangkok era but to have been restored during the reign of Rama II, the Chinese porcelain on the gable ends of the wiharn having become popular then, signifying the scale of trade with China. Inside the wiharn are murals, with depictions of Siamese cats perched above the main doorway, on guard against mice, cockroaches and other vermin. The windows on the temple ubosot, or ordination hall, are unlike any other, resembling the port-holes of a ship, set deep within the thick white walls, protected by gold and lacquer shutters and ringed by elaborate frames. The sema stones, used to mark the sacred area of an ubosot, are encased in cylindrical columns looking rather like miniature lighthouses, with the stones visible only through a small slot on either side. Several chedis surround the temple, and there are many small chedis and grave markers outside the house of the abbot, beyond which can be seen a Chinese pagoda rearing into the sky.
Follow the lane around past the front of Wat Thong Noppakhun and some of the most exuberant Chinese architecture in Bangkok will be revealed. Chee Chin Khor was a society formed in 1952 to undertake charitable works for the poor and to provide disaster relief supplies. During the first forty years of its existence the society headquarters had a rather peripatetic existence, but this riverside site became home in 1993. A temple was built, a four-storey structure with multiple roofs clad in green ceramic tiling, and the pagoda was added as recently as 2001, becoming an instant landmark for river travellers. Saturday morning is a good time to visit Chee Chin Khor Temple, as there is a service at that time and a sizeable crowd gathers at the open-air restaurant at the side of the compound. There are four altars within the temple, with fat Chinese Buddhas and gongs and incense, and the crowd surges into the building to disperse amongst the various floors and altars. A climb up the circular interior staircase of the pagoda is irresistible, and from the top there are beautiful views of the river and the city.
The towering stupas and prang of Wat Phichaya, built with materials from China.
From here, too, is a view of Wang Lee Mansion, one of the few remaining walled Chinese courtyard houses that were once a feature of Thonburi and Bangkok. Wang Lee Mansion is not open to the public, and in fact is still a residence and a company compound. There is no alley through from Chee Chin Khor to the imposing gate of the mansion, so a return to Somdet Chao Phraya Road is necessary before entering the neighbouring Chiang Mai Road. The road is short and runs directly down to what was a harbour known as Huay Chun Long, which means “Steam Boat Pier”. There is a shrine here to the goddess Mae Tuptim, where Chinese sailors would pray for a safe passage across the ocean. Chinese operas are still performed from time to time in front of the shrine. On both sides of the road are godowns and shophouses belonging to Chinese merchants, and the entrance to the Wang Lee compound is busy with trucks and pickups. Tan Chu Huang, the founder of the Wang Lee business, was an immigrant from Shantou who arrived in Bangkok in 1871. He established a business in rice trading and milling, which eventually was to become one of the largest of its kind, with a rice mill here next to the pier and another four further downstream. Following his marriage to a Siamese lady of Chinese descent, he built Wang Lee Mansion beside the harbour in 1881. Designed in a U-shape around a central courtyard paved with flagstones brought from China as ballast, the house is still in the hands of the same family, and has recently been carefully restored.
Opposite to the Wang Lee Mansion is a lane leading to Wat Thong Thammachat, an Ayutthaya-era temple in a woodland glade that seems far removed from the booming traffic, despite being only five minutes away from the main road. The ubosot, with its neat red window frames and its neat red fence, sits in a well-tended courtyard with a red meeting hall behind. The lane will take the visitors round behind the temple, through a small area of old houses, and back out to Somdet Chao Phraya Road. Little can have changed in this locality over the past century.
A long, straight canal, Klong Somdet Chao Phraya, runs alongside this road. Appearing on late nineteenth century maps as Regent Canal, it led directly to a small island on which were three palaces, one of them belonging to Dit Bunnag, who had acted as regent for Rama IV and who was elevated to Somdet Chao Phraya, the highest title a commoner could attain, equal to royalty. Only the king and the king’s brother, who was appointed “second king”, a position invented by Rama IV but later discontinued, were higher. Alongside this canal too were mansions and even a zoological garden. One of the canal-side mansions belonged to another member of the Bunnag family, who were descended from a Persian merchant who had settled in Ayutthaya around the year 1600. Built in the last years of Rama IV’s reign, the two-storey mansion is a romantic blend of English Tudor and Moorish. When the Somdet Chao Phraya Hospital was built nearby, an annex for the psychiatric unit was built next to the mansion, and the old house taken over as the residence for the hospital director. Today, beautifully conserved, it acts as the hospital reception, while on the second floor is the Institute of Psychiatry Museum. Alas, Regent Island is no more the home of palaces: the surrounding canal was filled in to become Arun Amarin Road, and although there are a couple of gracious old houses behind high walls, the island is now fringed with standard mid-twentieth-century housing.
Not far from Regent Island and on the bank of the Somdet Chao Phraya canal is a glorious riot of white stupas. This is Wat Phichaya Yatikaram, an Ayutthaya-era temple that was greatly enlarged during the years 1829–1832, in the time of Rama III, by Tat Bunnag, the brother of Dit. The two brothers were so powerful in the court of Siam that they were known as the Sun and the Moon, and Tat also took the title of Somdet Chao Phraya. The temple architecture is heavily influenced by Chinese style, very much a characteristic of Rama III’s reign, when almost all of Siam’s trade was with China. The Bunnags owned junks, and most of the materials used in the construction of the temple were brought in from China, including the boundary stones that were carved by Chinese stoneworkers. Instead of the overlapping roof leaves and the finials of the traditional Siamese temple, the roof of the ubosot resembles the hood of a Chinese carriage, and the eaves are decorated with stucco flowers and dragons. At the main entrance of the ubosot is a painting of a Chinese warrior with a lion at his feet, a theme that is repeated on another door, where a dagger-wielding angel is subduing a lion. Two enormous white prangs tower over
