The Potters' Village
A potters ’ village founded by Mon immigrants, the city’s biggest flower market, Little India, the first modern school, and a Japanese ossuary that was the hideout for an army officer on the run, are all to be found in this colourful district. Duration: 3 hours
With the siege of Pegu in southern Burma in 1757 and the subsequent fall of the city to the Burmese King Alaungpaya, the last independent Mon kingdom vanished. The Mon had once been a great people, the first recognisable civilisation in Southeast Asia. They are believed to have originated in eastern India and to have migrated eastwards across Burma and the central Siam plains, bringing Buddhism with them. The Khmer empire and the rise of the Tai had seen them pushed back into Burma, where they settled throughout the south. Now that Pegu was in Burmese hands, the Mon were a people without a country. A large number of Mon had migrated to Ayutthaya during the second half of the sixteenth century, during a time of great internal turmoil in Burma, and they had joined the Siamese in fighting the endless Burmese wars of this period. Now a new wave of migrants followed, being welcomed by the king of Ayutthaya as staunch enemies of the Burmese. But of course, Ayutthaya itself had only a decade left before it too fell to the Burmese, led now by Alaungpaya’s son Hsinbyushin. As with most of the other survivors, the Mon moved down the Chao Phraya River. Some settled on Koh Kred, about twenty kilometres north of Bangkok, where an earlier canal cut to straighten the course of the river had created an island. Here they made their own distinctive pottery from baked unglazed red clay, carved and moulded with intricate patterns. Other Mon refugees sailed further down the river and eventually formed a community in a small nook of Rattanakosin Island, at the junction of Klong Lot Wat Ratchabophit and the inner moat. Mon traders would sail their boats along the moat and tie up at a spot where a bridge had been built. This structure became known as Saphan Mon, or Mon Bridge, and by the time of Rama iii, in the 1820s, it was a handsome teak structure. The main business of the Mon at this settlement was pottery, and in particular the conical-lidded traditional cooking pots called moh, which they made here and also imported from Koh Kred. The area became known as Ban Moh.
A visit to this area today won’t reveal many cooking pots, but what can be found is an area of crumbling and stately shop-houses, amongst the finest on Rattanakosin Island, together with an oddly rural atmosphere, for traffic bypasses this sliver of land and the canal is quiet and leaty. There is a river pier, serving the busy market of Pak Klong Talat, and a sluice gate at the mouth of the canal protects the water level when the Chao Phraya rises. The shophouses were built in the late nineteenth century, after the Mon had given up their pottery trade, but look up at the pediments on the corners of this big, old development and it can be seen that the architect has placed replicas of the moh on each one to represent the original activity of the area. Follow the canal further and the motif is reproduced elsewhere, and it becomes an intriguing little search to find pottery designs, one of the most inventive being the abstract design woven on the corner of Ban
Moh Road and Phra Phitak. Near here is the modern-day Saphan Mon, a prosaic enough concrete structure, but having an elegant pottery theme worked into the wrought iron railings. The rather grand sweep of buildings on Atsadang Road, facing the canal, were shops selling luxury imported goods and included Siam’s first motor showrooms. The shophouses on the corner of Soi Phraya Sri are outstandingly handsome and prosperous looking, and they were at one point used as a commercial store run by German and English owners. This street takes its name from a prominent phraya sri, or senior court minister, of Rama lll’s time: the minister’s residence stood on this spot. Ban Moh does in fact have a strong connection to the royal family of this era, for almost invisible behind a wall on Ban Moh Road is one of Bangkok’s oldest palaces. Ban Moh Palace was the residence of Prince Phithak Thewet, the twenty-second son of Rama II. He was born in the Grand Palace in 1798. When he was 12 years old, he was given his own palace on the bank of the moat here, near to the homes of his brothers. But in 1832 a fire razed the area. The prince then built this present structure. During the reign of Rama IV the prince was promoted and given command of the cavalry and elephant brigades. The canal-side location of his palace was important, because a bathing place was needed for the elephants. As an example of early Rattanakosin architecture the palace is outstanding, although unfortunately it is not open to the public. The design was a fairly standard one for princes of this rank: a single-storey building, raised high above the ground to be away from the flooding, with a wooden frame and walls, and a roof of unglazed tiles. Prince Phithak Thewet lived at Ban Moh Palace until his death in 1863. He was the founder of the Kunjara na Ayutthaya family, who retain the palace to this day and use it as a private home.
Pak Klong Talat (“market at the canal mouth”) was formerly a floating market, the waterways filled in many years ago and the market activity now taking place in the streets and in the narrow sois. It was closed in 1893 when the area was being developed and the vendors moved to a market at Hua Lampong. In the years immediately following World War II the population of the city began to grow rapidly and the existing markets proved to be not enough to supply demand. The government provided the land to once again become a market, and placed it under the control of the Market Organisation. There are actually three separate markets wedged in here, although they all deal in flowers, fruit and vegetables, and collectively Pak Klong Talat is the most important wholesale flower market in Thailand. Dawn is the best time to visit, when the flowers arrive by boat and truck from all over Thailand and florists come to collect their supplies for shops, stalls and markets elsewhere in the city. The people who make a living by stringing and selling flower garlands also come here to buy sacks of jasmine and marigolds. As well as wholesale the market here is retail, with shops and stalls in the streets and alleys, and all offering flowers at low prices.
Shophouses built in the late nineteenth century on the site of the old pottery village.
The market stretches all the way along the riverfront to the Memorial Bridge, a distance of around 200 metres (218 yards), the bridge itself being important to the transportation of market produce.
On the corner of Saphan Phut Lane is a block of tall, imposing shophouses built in the time of Rama vii. They are different in style to the shophouses that were being built in Rattanakosin only a few years earlier, reflecting the changes in fashion and building technique heralded by the 1920s. Gone are the old sloping roofs, and in has come what must have been a very smart concrete parapet with a deck roof. The walls and windows are largely unadorned, letting the bulk of the building with its smoothly curving frontage speak for itself Look a little closer and it can be seen that the design was originally for three storeys, and that a fourth has been built up over the roof deck at a later date. These shophouses face the piazza at which sits a statue of Rama I, the bridge having been built to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Chakri dynasty. The statue was installed at the same time the bridge was opened in 1932: the design was by Prince Naris, while the statue was moulded and cast by Corrado Feroci. It is, however, a fanciful likeness, as are any of the first three Chakri kings and of King Taksin, images of the Siamese monarchs having been forbidden until the reign of Rama IV, the first of the great modernisers, when in 1856 an unknown photographer was allowed to photograph the king alongside Queen Dhepsirindhara.
On the other side of the piazza is the approach road for the Pokklao Bridge, which was opened to traffic in 1984, and next to this can be found a curious structure, a beautiful mansion painted yellow and white, set amongst trees and with a spacious forecourt protected by an elegant fence. There is a functioning clock in a central tower, and a Thai flag flies from the roof. There are no signs of life here, and when examined from the rear, the house, although it has an attractive leafy back garden, proves to be only a fa9ade. When the bridge and roadworks were being constructed, Bangkok lost one of its architectural gems. Siam had issued its first stamps in 1883 and opened its first post office the same year, housed inside a mansion belonging to Phra Preecha Kolkarn. Almost exactly a century later, in 1982, the old mansion was demolished to make way for the approach road. Although it had ceased to be the postal headquarters in 1927, when the General Post Office opened on Charoen Krung Road, the building with its symmetrical Rama v-era fa9ade and its tall clock tower was still firmly associated with the postal service and featured on a centenary stamp the year after its destruction. As part of the conservation plan for Rattanakosin, the frontage of the house was rebuilt to a smaller scale near its original site in 2004.
The Memorial Bridge, originally a bascule span powered by electricity.
At the foot of the Memorial Bridge is Wat Ratchaburana, one of the oldest temples in Bangkok, having been built late in the Ayutthaya era by a Chinese trader named Liab. Initially known as Wat Cheen Liab (Cheen meaning “Chinese”) it later became known as Wat Liab and gave its name to the power station that was built here on temple land. Electricity had been introduced to Siam in 1884 by Field Marshal Chao Phraya Surasakdi Montri, who had served as charge d’affaires at the Siamese Embassy in Paris and been greatly impressed with the illumination of the city by electric light. Returning to Bangkok, he attempted without success to raise interest in the possibilities of electricity. Realising that electric light had to be seen to be believed, he decided to introduce lighting to the army barracks, which is now the Ministry of Defence building and which was then being constructed on a site next to the Grand Palace. Selling some land he had inherited from his father to raise the finance, the field marshal commissioned one of his military trainers, an Italian named Mayola, to visit England and purchase the equipment. Mayola bought two generating sets and the necessary cabling, spending 14,400 baht, and had everything shipped to Bangkok. The generators were installed at the barracks, and a cable was strung across to the Grand Palace. Surasakdi Montri hung lights from the cable and switched them on for the king’s birthday, 20th September. Thereafter, electricity was installed for lighting at the royal court and in the houses of the aristocracy, and eventually on selected streets. (Surasakdi Montri also imported the first motorcar into Siam, around the year 1900, and consequently has much to answer for.)
In 1887 the government had granted a concession for a horse-drawn tramway to a venture led by John Loftus and Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu, the trams running from the Grand Palace all the way to Bang Kolaem, at the southern end of Charoen Krung Road. The venture was not a success and was transferred to a Danish company, Bangkok Tramways Company, whose chief engineer and later managing director Aage Westenholz was able to harness the modest power supplies available to provide an electric tram service, beginning in January 1893. They were the first electric trams in Asia. In 1898 Richelieu obtained a fifty-year monopoly concession to provide electric power to Siam, and established the Siam Electricity Company. Westenholz was placed in charge and a power generating station was built on land owned by Wat Liab. The tram company was absorbed into Siam Electricity, and new tramlines were opened in other parts of the city. By the early 1920s there were seven lines covering almost fifty kilometres. Siam Electricity therefore owned both the generating plant and the trams. In 1912, another generating plant was opened at Samsen by the Public Works Department to serve the northern side of the city, much of the output being used for the newly constructed Bangkok Waterworks and the new Dusit district built on what had been open land and orchards.
The prang of Wat Liab, a temple that was almost obliterated during World War II.
The Wat Liab power station, as Bangkok’s primary source of electricity, was a distinctive landmark with multiple tall chimneys. The boilers were fuelled by paddy husk (there was an oil reserve on standby) transported direct to the plant in boatloads of ten tons at a time, the boats using a small inlet from the river to moor directly alongside. Suction pumps were used to unload the husk, the pumps being powerful enough to unload two boats in forty-five minutes. The husk was stored in a shed and transported to the boilers by means of four screw compressors. There were ten boilers, feeding steam to six turbines, each turbine driving an alternator that generated alternating current at 3,600 volts and 50 cycles. From the alternators the current went through a switchboard that distributed it via high-tension underground cables to feeders and thence all over town, providing lighting for streets, houses and offices, and power for installations such as the city waterworks and the Memorial Bridge lifting mechanism. The feeders supplied current to the generating plant for the tramways, where there were three electric motor generators that supplied the necessary 550-volt direct current for traction; from 1926 onwards, when it was electrified, they also supplied the Paknam Railway that ran the 21 kilometres (13 miles) from Hua Lampong to Paknam, the town at the mouth of the Chao Phraya.
Wat Liab, although continuing to be known as such, had officially been renamed Wat Ratchaburana in the reign of Rama I, when it had been designated as a royal temple, first class, the name being taken from a prominent temple at Sukhothai. Rama II built a cloister to enshrine some of the 162 Buddha images that he brought in from the provinces, eighty of which he placed in a new wiharn. Rama iii added a prang that was decorated with coloured ceramic tiles, and in the reign of Rama IV the master artist Khrua In Khong, a pioneer in using European perspective in traditional Siamese art, added murals to the ubosot. In 1935, something very curious was added to Wat Liab. The number of Japanese citizens in Bangkok had been increasing, and after making numerous requests they were finally given permission to build an ossuary in Bangkok to house the ashes of their dead. A monk named Fujii Shinsui, who was from the Shingon sect centre at Mount Koya and was then studying in Bangkok, conceived the idea of a three-storey concrete ossuary based on the Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, and was given permission to build it in the grounds of Wat Liab. Funds were raised through the Japanese Association of Siam. A Buddha image was sent to the ossuary from a temple known as Ni Thai Ji, or Japan Thai Temple, in Japan’s Nagoya province. Monk Fujii, still in Bangkok at the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, was sent as a military chaplain to serve with the Japanese army during the invasion of Burma, leaving the ossuary in the care of an elderly monk named Chino and a student named Sasaki Kyogo. With the Japanese army occupying Siam, the electricity generating station at Wat Liab became a primary target for Allied bombers, and in April 1945, in the final stages of the war, the temple itself was hit and so badly damaged that it was deleted from the official list. Only the prang and, ironically, the Japanese ossuary survived.
In June of that year one of the most notorious Japanese military commanders arrived in Bangkok. Colonel Tsuji Masanobu had played a significant role in the massacre of Chinese in Singapore and in the Bataan Death March in the Philippines. In Burma he had been complicit in the execution of an Allied airman, whose liver was removed and cut up, and then roasted on skewers during a mess dinner. Although the other Japanese officers were unable to eat their portions, Tsuji finished his with great enthusiasm, declaring that it helped him to hate the enemy even more, and thus adding cannibalism to the list of war crimes that he faced upon the Japanese surrender by Emperor Hirohito on 15th August 1945. Tsuji had been in Bangkok to quell a likely uprising by the 150,000-strong Siamese army and police force, which was being kept in check by a garrison of only 10,000 Japanese. Now he was a fugitive. On August 17th he removed his uniform and went to the bombed-out ruins of Wat Liab, where at the ossuary he found the monks Chino and Sasaki. Disguising himself as a Buddhist monk and acquiring an identity card in the name of Aoki Norinbu, Tsuji took shelter in the vault. He wasn’t to stay there for long. In the middle of September the British entered Siam. They heard rumours that Tsuji was disguised as a monk, and began searching for him. In the early hours of the morning on 29th October, Tsuji left the ossuary and made his way to a rendezvous with members of Chiang Kai Shek’s Blue Shirt Society, who were operating out of an office on Surawong Road. Two days later, now disguised as a Chinese merchant in a white jacket, black trousers, white pith helmet and tinted glasses, he boarded a train at Hua Lampong and accompanied by two escorts made his way to Ubon. From there he crossed the Mekong in a canoe and went to Vientiane. He then made his way to Hanoi and on over the Chinese border to Chungking, the temporary capital and seat of Chiang Kai Shek’s government. Tsuji arrived back in Japan in 1948, and managing to evade war crimes charges he became a prominent politician. He disappeared while on a trip to Laos in 1961, and was officially declared dead seven years later.
Wat Liab was rebuilt from local donations and in 1960 restored to its former prominence, the ubosot featuring very fine stucco mouldings undertaken by Sanga Mayura, who was one of the artists who painted the murals in the ordination hall of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha during the reign of Rama VII. The Japanese ossuary remains to this day, and since the war has always had a resident monk from the Mount Koya Shingon centre, usually sent on a three-year mission, and given a second ordination according to Thai Theravada Buddhist law in order to undertake religious ceremonies with the Thai monks. Sasaki Kyogo went on to become a respected scholar and university professor in Kyoto. His son Koden and grandson Kojun have both spent three-year residences at the ossuary. The Wat Liab generating plant had been put out of action in the April 1945 air raids that destroyed the temple, and to keep the trams running two Mitsubishi submarines that the Siamese had purchased in the late 1930s were moored in the river and their engines connected to the tram sub-station at Bangkok dock to run the generators. This was not very effective, but the Wat Liab plant was working again within a few months, and continued working until well after Siam Electricity’s half-century concession expired, after which both plants were taken under the wing of the new Metropolitan Electricity Authority (mea), a state enterprise under the Ministry of Interior. A few years later, in 1961, the generating side of the business was transferred to a new organisation that later became the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, leaving the mea in charge of distribution. The Wat Liab plant was closed down in 1965 when power generation was moved to the outskirts of the city, and the present mea offices and a carpark were built on the site.
Suan Kularb School, designed for a new generation of administrators and leaders
There are some districts of Bangkok so poetically named that one goes there full of anticipation, only to find something completely different. Suan Kularb, or the Rose Garden, is one. Although adjacent to the city’s largest flower market, it has nothing to do with roses. What will be found is a handsome colonial style building occupying an entire block: the orange-ochre frontage with its regularly spaced green shutters seems to go on forever. This is Suan Kularb School, and it was the first educational institute in Siam to offer a modern curriculum.
Rama V, who realised that if his country was going to survive in the modern world it had to have a modern educational system, founded the school in 1882. Up to that time, schooling had been by monks in the temples. But Suan Kularb changed all that, training the new generation of civil servants, professionals and merchants who were to take Siam through an era of extraordinary growth and prosperity. The original school was not on this spot, however. It was located in the grounds of the Grand Palace, just a short distance away, on a plot of land in the compound named Suan Kularb. So the school took this name, and retained it when the move was made to these premises, built on land belonging to Wat Liab in 1910. The school is still known to students as “the long building” because for many years it was the longest building in Siam. Near the main entrance is an image of a many-armed elephant named Luang Phor Pu that is believed to house the protective spirit of the place, known to one and all affectionately as “Grandfather”, and to whom the students make daily offerings of garlands. The school emblem depicts a book with a ruler, pen and pencil, a royal headdress and the initials of Rama V along with a bouquet of roses, and a gracious rose design is woven in amongst the lettering on the school gates. Suan Kularb, a male-only school, counts some of Thailand’s greatest leaders in politics, law and business amongst its former pupils. This immediate locality has evolved into something of an educational district; Siam’s first school of arts and crafts, Poh Chang College, opened directly next door to Suan Kularb in 1913, where it flourishes to this day, while directly across Tri Phet Road is the Rajamangala University of Technology and also a sizeable school belonging to Wat Liab. On the corner directly next to the temple stupa is a very unusual three-storey building with broad verandas and orange-painted balustrades. Originally the residence of Chao Phraya Rattanathibet and built in the latter years of Rama V, it was for many years used by the Ministry of Education. This well-maintained building is now home to the Agricultural Promotion Department.
There are several Indian communities in Bangkok, most notably around the junction of Silom and Charoen Krung, where they are prominent in the jewellery industry, and along the stretch of Sukhumvit Road from Soi 4 down to the 20s, where they invested in land when the road was little more than an elephant trail and where they now have vast property holdings. Nowhere, however, is there a greater concentration of Indian families and businesses than at Pahurat, the square of land bounded by Pahurat, Chakraphet, Tri Phet and Charoen Krung roads.
The Indians were not the first occupants of this area. When Bangkok was first established, and the Chinese merchants moved a little way downriver to what is now Chinatown to make way for the new construction work, the area that was to become Pahurat was stagnant, marshy ground. Around this time internal convulsions in Vietnam resulted in a large migration of Vietnamese to Siam, and while the Christian immigrants settled in the Portuguese Catholic community the Buddhists made this wilderness their home. For a while it was known as Ban Yuen, the Vietnamese village, but in 1898 came a fire so devastating that it completely cleared the land. A few years earlier, Princess Pahurat Manimai, the first-born daughter of Rama V and Queen Saovabha Bongsri, had died at the age of eight. The little girl had already been allocated properties under the royal patronage, and these were donated by her grieving parents to the building of a new road, one of many that were being built in Bangkok at this time. Pahurat Road ran ten metres wide across the land and was originally intended as a residential area for members of the royal court, who lived on its south side. A large number of Chinese shopkeepers and craftsmen, mainly jewellers, settled here to serve the community. On the northern side of the road, where the China World department store now stands, was Wang Burapha, a palace and fort built in the time of Rama I as part of the city’s eastern defences and greatly enlarged in the 1820s. In the 1870s, with invasion from the east no longer a threat, the palace was rebuilt again, this time as a courtly residence for Prince Bhanurangsi Sawangwongse, a younger brother of Rama V, who was commander-in-chief of the Royal Siamese Army and founder of the Thai postal service, but who is probably best remembered by history as the father of the famous racing driver, Prince Bira. Alongside was a market named Ming Muang, which made fine quality clothing. To service this market a number of textiles suppliers began to move into the area, predominantly Indians, who have had a long trading history with Thailand.
Amongst the Indian immigrants were a large number of Sikhs, who began arriving in the final years of the nineteenth century, and who in their homeland have a special affinity with textiles. The first is recorded as Ladha Singh, who arrived in Bangkok in 1890, and by 1912 the community had grown to a size where, rather than holding prayers in their own homes, they established their own temple, or gurdwara. For this they rented a wooden house in Ban Moh, but this proved inadequate and in the following year the community leased a larger wooden house on the corner of Pahurat and Chakraphet roads, where they could conduct prayers and other ceremonies on a daily basis. By 1932, the Sikh community had become large and successful, and had raised 16,200 baht to purchase a piece of land on which to build a new gurdwara. A liirther 25,000 baht went towards the construction of a three-storey building, which opened in 1933 and was named Gurdwara Siri Guru Singh Sabha. During the World War II bombing by Allied forces, two 1,000-pound bombs aimed at the nearby Wat Liab power station and the Memorial Bridge missed their target, and fell through the roof of the gurdwada. Several hundred Sikhs were inside at the time, but miraculously the bombs failed to explode and no one was hurt. Other bombs exploding in the vicinity did, however, cause cracks to the building, and although they were patched up the decision was taken in 1979 to demolish the structure and build a larger one. The present gurdwara was completed two years later and is a six-storey structure standing on an area of 1,440 square metres (15,500 sq ft). It is the second largest Sikh temple outside of India. Although the golden dome and white upper storeys can be seen sailing above the rooftops, the building is completely hemmed in by the surrounding buildings and labyrinth of lanes, and unlike the traditional four entrances of a gurdwara, it has only three, the fourth being impractical because of the India Emporium, which adjoins the structure on the eastern side. The gurdwara is more than a temple, it is a self-contained community centre that includes a clinic, kindergarten, function rooms, and the traditional langar hall where vegetarian food is served as an act of hospitality and freely available to anyone.
Although the Sikhs form the majority of the population in Pahurat, which is now regarded as the centre of Thailand’s wholesale and retail textile business, this is also the home of Hindus and Muslims, and is one of the most densely packed districts in Bangkok. The pavements are almost impassable at weekends, but even the pavements seem relatively clear when the alleys that run through Pahurat market are explored. Lined on both sides by textile shops and stalls, some are barely wide enough to allow two people to pass. But here one is in an Indian bazaar. There is Indian music, the smells of Indian spices and cooking, and of course the textiles and garments that can be purchased are dazzling in their variety and cheapness. Here too is chunky Indian jewellery, pictures of deities, and household shrines. Tiny restaurants serve food at prices that are next to nothing, and Bangkok’s oldest Indian restaurant, Royal India, opened here half a century ago in the alley opposite the shrine to the Chinese goddess of mariners, San Chao Mae Tuptim, built by Fukkien Chinese who plied between Bangkok and South China. First registered as a place of religion in 1917, the shrine was destroyed during the Allied bombing and rebuilt in 1955.
A remnant of the original days of Ban Yuen is still here. Wat Dibaya Vari, to be found down a small alley behind the Nightingale-Olympic Department Store, was built in 1776 by Mu Thien Su, an ethnic Chinese immigrant from Vietnam. The temple was later abandoned, after the Vietnamese had left, but was renovated by a group of Chinese immigrants who settled here in the time of Rama V. A fire later badly damaged the temple and it was rebuilt after World War
II. In the past few years it has been completely rebuilt, and given its cramped surroundings is surprisingly large, rising to a height of four storeys. Inside is an image of Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and figures of several other Chinese deities. The name of the temple means “holy water” after the well above which it was built.
Wang Burapha fell into disuse in the 1940s and was pulled down in 1951, but this district, which to this day is known as Burapha, had in the preceding decade emerged as one of the trendiest spots in town. Ming Muang Market had developed into a popular public market for textiles and clothing: it took the form of a large square bordered on all sides by shophouses, with the open area covered by a roof, and hairdressers, clothes shops and restaurants all doing a thriving business. Thailand’s first modern department store, Nightingale-Olympic, opened its doors opposite the market in 1936, occupying the first two floors of what was at the time the tallest building in the city, its frontage taking its design theme from an abacus. Today the store remains in a time warp, with aged mannequins and no airconditioning, but still stocked as it always has been with imported products such as cosmetics, sporting goods and musical instruments. The store had been opened by a Chinese immigrant’s son named Matti Niyomvanich, and remains family-owned to this day In its prime the store employed almost a hundred staff and served the most affuent sector of society, being so well known and respected that it even had a mail order service for customers in the provinces. Today, once fashionable sportswear and equipment moulders in cabinets, none of the fashions seem to be later than the 1960s, and some of the goods have such a museum aura around them that they are no longer for sale. Most of the business now comes from the cosmetics, especially the Merle Norman brand, which started out in Los Angeles only a few years before Nightingale-Olympic opened, and on which some of the store’s early fame was built.
These craft are part of a fleet that keeps the canals and river clear of weed and litter.
The year 1932 saw the building almost opposite of the Chalerm Krung Royal Theatre, decreed by Rama vii as one of the landmarks to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the city. An imposing Art Deco structure, it was the first of its kind in Southeast Asia to have air-conditioning, and was fully equipped for the new talkies. Renovated in recent years, the theatre today specialises in the staging of khon masked performances, and is used for live concerts and classical plays. Also dating from the 1930s is the nearby On Lok Yun coffee shop, completely unchanged by its very elderly owner who has sought to retain the original ambience when this was one of the coolest hangouts in town for young people shopping in the market and enjoying the theatre. Burapha remained a fashionable district through the 1950s and 60s, when the clearance of the old palace allowed the building of three new cinemas, the King, the Queen and the Grand, all showing the latest Hollywood films. Also dating from the early postwar years were the Merry King department store, and the opening of many new shops selling famous brand-name goods of the day, along with fashionable electric lighting and other interior decor products and consumer goods. Eventually, in the 1960s, Burapha was eclipsed by the construction of Siam Square, which became the trendy hangout of the day (a position it retains even now). Ming Muang Market was cleared away, and Old Siam Plaza built on the site. Originally the Plaza was meant to be a centre for jewellery and gold shops, of which there are many in this immediate neighbourhood, some being run by Chinese descended from the shopkeepers who moved in when Pahurat was built. This didn’t work out but today Old Siam is a thriving shopping mall for clothes, so the spirit of the old market lives on.
Although there is much in the Pahurat area to tempt buyers, local and foreign alike, there is one thriving little district of shops where you almost certainly won’t be able to buy anything. Along Burapha Road, east of the Chalerm Krung Royal Theatre, are a great number of gun shops. Anyone wishing to legally purchase a gun in Thailand will come to one of these shops, which also sell accessories and ammunition. Most of the guns sold are imported, as Thailand does not have a significant legitimate firearms industry, and there is a heavy import duty. Thais can buy guns, of course, but much official documentation is required, including proof of income, employment and address, along with fingerprinting and a background check for a criminal record. A foreign purchaser will need to supply the same information. Given that the whole purchasing process takes about a month, and that prices are deliberately high, there are few foreign customers. But for Thais with the right money and background, wishing to defend themselves and their homes, or who shoot as a hobby, this small area is where almost any kind of gun can be purchased.
World History
