From Bangkok’s mainline railway terminus, this walk takes us to a temple with a coffin shop and then on to the home of the man who is responsible for one of the most enduring mysteries of the East.
On one of my first visits to Bangkok, more than thirty years ago, I stayed at the old Sheraton on Surawong, which is now the Tawana, and on Sunday morning I took myself for a quiet walk. I had no guidebook, and no idea where I was going. I walked to the top of the road and turned left, heading for the temple whose red roofs I could now see, when I chanced upon a most curious shop. Its window contained nothing except photographs of corpses, many of them in poor condition. I later learned that this was the office of Ruam Katanyu, one of the two main charitable operations in Bangkok that collects dead bodies from the streets, rivers, canals, burned buildings, and anywhere else life may have expired, and brings them here either for collection by relatives or for cremation at the temple, Wat Hua Lampong. Any dead body not identified has its photograph pasted in the office window in case someone might later recognise it. Ruam Katanyu also performs a rudimentary ambulance service, delivering the sick and injured to hospital. The vehicles of the body snatchers are mainly converted pickup trucks, and the only thing to distinguish them usually as they speed through the traffic is a flashing amber light on the cab roof At a small chapel next to Wat Hua Lampong Thais donate money for coffins for the unclaimed bodies. Anyone can do this, and it is very much an act of compassion. Donators receive two slips of paper, one to attach to an empty coffin, the other to burn at an altar. Donations are usually 500 baht. Wat Hua Lampong itself is an imposing structure, occupying a large area on the corner of Siphraya Road, and unusual in that the ubosot and wiharn are both raised on a one-storey high platform. A lifesize figure of Rama V is seated in a shrine at the platform. It is a royal temple, third class, and in 1996 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the ascension to the throne of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Wat Hua Lampong underwent extensive renovations. The Golden Jubilee seal, depicting two elephants flanking a multi-tiered umbrella, is featured extensively in the remodelling.
The design of Hua Lampong terminus combines classical and industrial elements
The word lampong means “loudspeaker” but is also used for a type of flower whose bloom forms a loudspeaker shape, while hua
Means “head” or “bulb”. This area must have been used for growing these flowers in the past, and in addition to the temple taking its name from the locality, as did the canal that was later buried under Rama iv Road, on the other side of the street and a few minutes walk to the northwest stands the mainline railway terminus that has also taken the name. And whereas Wat Hua Lampong stands on the border of Bangrak district, Hua Lampong Railway Station stands in Pathum Wan, the name meaning “lotus forest”. Clearly, the muddy, swampy land here had once been very fertile indeed.
Siam’s first railway was the Paknam line that ran from Bangkok to what is now Samut Prakharn, at the mouth of the river, a distance of 21 kilometres (13 miles). Opened in April 1893 by Rama V, it was a Belgian-Danish joint venture, with the steam locomotives built by Kraus of Munich. The Bangkok terminus was built on the edge of the
Padung Krung Kasem canal, for easy access to the wholesalers and markets in Chinatown, just across the bridge, for the main purpose of the line was to bring in goods from ships at deep anchor at the river mouth along with fish and other produce. The one-metre gauge line had ten stops and proved very quickly to also be a popular commuter line, providing a rollicking ride for passengers alongside the Hua Lampong canal, and then turning to run directly alongside the river, crossing the small canals along its route via timber bridges before puffing to a halt at Paknam Market. The line closed down in 1960, but the route can still be followed today by road, becoming a distinct thoroughfare of its own after Rama IV Road ends, and after the tail end of the old Hua Lampong canal emerges briefly into daylight to disgorge into the river, for there is a long thoroughfare here named Thanon Thang Rot Fai Sai Kao, “the road that skirts the railway line”. There is almost nothing to see now, as the rails were torn up, except for a spur that heads into the port area at Klong Toei, which for some reason has survived. One of the original Kraus locomotives has recently been installed near the Paknam terminus, although enthusiasts say that it actually ran on the Mahachai-Mae Klong line that was built from Thonburi to Samut Songkhram at about the same time, Kraus supplying the engines for both ventures.
Laying of the northern and northeastern railway lines, under the newly formed Royal State Railways of Siam, began in 1891, and the terminus for both was built near to the Bangkok terminus of the Paknam line. The Royal State Railways built their maintenance yard nearby, but the railways proved to be such a success that a much larger station was soon required. The maintenance yard was moved to Makkasan in 1910, where it can still be seen, much of it in a state of picturesque industrial ruin, and the building of Hua Lampong station began. Mario Tamagno, one of the Italian architects who has left such a distinctive mark on the city, and who was under a twenty-five-year contract to Siam’s Public Works Department, undertook the design. Before coming to Bangkok Tamagno had studied and taught in Turin, one of Italy’s great industrial centres, where new architectural styles were emerging for the factories and the company buildings.
Built by Dutch engineers, and with fourteen platforms, the station opened on 25th June 1916. Standing in front of the station today, one can see how Tamagno drew inspiration from his Turin background. That vaulted iron roof with its girder design, combined with the blue, green and clear-glass skylights, somehow sits easily in architectural terms above the Greco-Roman columns of the portico and the Renaissance-style wings on either side. Enter the station and the dimensions are a delight: despite its size, Hua Lampong is still to a human scale. The iron girder design of the frontage is followed throughout the building to support the roof, and the skylights, orange and clear glass at the far end, give the interior a light and airy feel. The offices on the upper level still have their window shutters, enhancing the European style of the era. Tamagno’s design initiated a style that later came to be known as Thai Art Deco, used in grand buildings such as the General Post Office and Chalermkrung Royal Theatre, as well as in smaller premises such as shophouses in Chinatown. Take a short walk from the station along Rama IV Road and over the canal bridge to the Maitri Chit Junction, and you will see how, with a clear view of Hua Lampong in front of him, the designer of a handsome block of shophouses has erected a pediment that is a miniature duplicate of the station frontage.
A riverbusplying the Saen Saeb canal passes the Jim Thompson House.
There is an old photograph in one of the books I have about Bangkok that always amuses me. It was taken at the beginning of the city’s railway era, the photographer standing on the bank of the Padung Krung Kasem canal, and in the foreground is a hotel proudly bearing the name hotel hovel. I can only assume that it was supposed to be Hotel Novel, and that the Thai usage of the English language was as whimsical then as it is now. But other than this the picture is interesting because it shows that in this area, to the front of the old Paknam Railway Station, the kind of inexpensive hotel accommodation that grows up around a railway terminus had already started to appear.
Exit the station today, and towards the left there is a big sign looming above the rooftops of a very elegant row of shophouses and bearing the words station hotel. The entry to the hotel is not exactly salubrious, being tucked down an alley lined by food shops that appear distinctly uninviting to even a usually happy enough consumer of street food. The lobby, though, is spacious and very Chinese in style, and the rooms, at about 250 baht, are not expensive by any standards. The Station Hotel is, however, not an ancient structure, the manager estimating about fifty years, so unless this is a reworking of an earlier building there is no great antiquity here. Pity. It all sounded rather romantic. By contrast, in Rong Muang, the lane that runs directly alongside the station, is something of a gem. The Sri Hua Lampong Hotel is housed inside a building that must have been here since the station itself. This is a very traditional old Thai-Chinese establishment. The reception desk is a small table in the far corner of the Chinese-style lobby, and there is a seating area made from tables and benches that once graced a railway carriage.
Opposite are the very attractive buildings that house the station offices, and further on along Rong Muang, past the big overhead conveyor that connects the Bangkok Mail Centre with the station, is the little village of Charoen Muang, once famous as an umbrellamaking district. These are the big sun umbrellas found shielding the tables in garden cafes and the grounds of hotels. There are only a handliil of these workshops still open, the main business of the district now being in wrought ironwork and steel products, and there are numerous shops that between them could probably offer anything needed in this line, ranging from an imposing set of gates, through to engine bolts and flanges. Rong Muang leads all the way alongside the station marshalling yards and emerges onto Rama I Road, Wat Sa Bua tucked into the corner where the ramp leads up onto the main road, its monks’ quarters sporting unless I am very much mistaken the art of Rong Muang in their fence and gateway, and a boldly embossed lotus pond over the main gate to illustrate the temple name. Directly opposite is Wat Chamni Hatthakan, its graceful Chinese-style floral gables rising in pastel blues and creams above the courtyard, porcelain forming the vases and flowers. Vividly coloured paintings adorn other gables, and on one, overlooking the front wall, is a small, embossed image of a Reclining Buddha that acts as an advertisement for the golden figure reclining inside.
Continue along Rama I Road, and directly under the National Stadium terminus of the BTS Skytrain is Soi Kasem San 2, which leads through to one of the strangest stories in the East.
The Jim Thompson House is a classic example of how a good story can make a tourist attraction. Had Thompson not disappeared in such mysterious circumstances in 1967 I doubt if the house would be so popular: in fact it would probably have been pulled down by now to make way for an apartment block. Before entering that intriguing gateway at the end of the lane, however, step out onto the canal pathway and gaze across the lumpy grey waters at the village opposite.
Ban Krua is where Jim Thompson’s interest in the fragments of glowing silk that he found from time to time in stores throughout Bangkok and in traditional homes eventually came into focus. The story of how he built up the silk industry from its almost extinct folk-art level to become world-famous is well known, but the reality of the small community of Ban Krua is a little more obscure. By the time Jim Thompson came on the scene, directly after World War II., silk weaving in Bangkok had almost died out. There was little demand for the material, which was mostly used by that time for ceremonial occasions. Most of the looms in the city had closed, and only at Ban Krua was silk weaving done on an appreciable scale. The residents of Ban Krua are Muslims, ethnic Cham people who migrated from Cambodia to Siam during the reign of Rama I. They had fought alongside the king’s troops during engagements against the Burmese, and as a reward had been allocated the land on which they live to this day. The community had brought with them the art of silk weaving, and Thompson had traced the origins of the silk that he so much admired to this village. Ban Krua had been transformed after he discovered them, in the late 1940s, for the community became his main silk production site, supplying silk thread and pigments, and creating patterns and designs. The canal water was still clear in those
Days, and was used for the washing and dyeing of the thread.
Thirty years ago there was a tiny ferry that plied from the Watergate of Jim Thompson’s house across the canal, a toothpick-thin canoe that could hold only two people and the oarsman: the clumsy foreign visitor would grip the sides of the boat in terror lest he be pitched into the water. These days the longtail boats that blare their way along the canal, their sawn-off truck engines causing a backwash that slaps furiously against the walkway, have made this small service an unviable one and a small footbridge crosses the water just a few metres from the house. In essence, the village has changed little since Thompson’s time. Old timber houses face out across the water, little shops sell sweets and drinks, and washing hangs everywhere. Along the walkway the houses are so tightly packed it is not easy to see how to enter the village. The alleys are so narrow that often only one person can pass at a time, and some are cul-de-sacs, leaving the visitor with the embarrassing possibility of blundering into someone’s living room. One of the easiest routes is the alley directly opposite the Thompson House watergate, for it leads to the green-painted mosque in the centre of the village. Anyone searching for gracious old teak houses is, however, going to be disappointed: the village had originally been built with whatever could be found, and even in the wider back-alley that forms the outer boundary of the village, where there are some bigger and more substantial homes than those by the canal, the design is, at best, prosaic.
Along the waterfront I found a small open-fronted shop with several colourful bolts of silk in a glass case, and when I asked where the silk came from I was told there are weaving sheds in Soi 9 and Soi 11. The sois aren’t marked, but I was directed to a narrow opening between the houses. I almost had to squeeze my way in, but I soon heard the familiar clickety-thud-clickety-thud of a loom. Through a doorway I spied an elderly gent hanging hanks of newly dyed black-and-scarlet silk over a pole to dry, and stepping past him (no one seems to mind you invading their privacy) I saw a mediaeval sight, a lone worker in a courtyard toiling over a steaming cauldron of dye, dipping the raw hanks into the liquid. Taking great care not to slip on the stone floor of the courtyard, and thus possibly emerging from the village a startlingly different colour to when I entered, I progressed into a low room where a solitary girl sat at an ancient wooden loom, weaving the most beautiful shimmering silk. The girl smiled pleasantly at me as she worked the treadle with her feet, and operated the warp with a piece of cloth dangling from the overhead part of the frame. There were, she said, a couple of other weavers nearby, and at the top of Soi 9 I found a house with two looms, and close by a shed with another five looms packed in together. These are the workshops of Lung Aood Ban Krua Thai Silk, an independent business owned by Manassanan Benjarongjinda, more usually known as Lung Aood, who is in his seventies and kept on working after the disappearance of Thompson in 1967, and the transfer of the silk weaving to Korat, which is where the company’s silk farms are located. Lung Aood has a thriving family business, supplying mostly regular customers, along with some walk-in trade. His wooden house is production centre, warehouse and shop, and from here the visitor can buy something that really is a part of Thai culture and history, and for a reasonable price.
Initially, Thompson had been living at The Oriental, where he was a shareholder. Needing more room, he moved into a rented house on Sathorn Road, and then built a small frame-house opposite Lumpini Park. When that became too small, Thompson began searching around for another plot of land, and eventually purchased the plot on the side of the canal. It had once been part of a large estate where an aristocratic family kept a summer palace, but the land had long been parcelled off and sold. Thompson built, or possibly to be more correct, assembled his house here, using six separate buildings from a variety of places and owners. The most important section, which became his drawing room, was an early nineteenth-century house from the weavers’ village. Thompson had been admiring the house, with its teak walling and delicate carving for several years, and when he moved it onto the site he reversed the walls so that the carvings faced the inside. The kitchen building also came from the weaving village, and had had an earlier existence as part of an old palace. Most of the remaining elements he found in Ayutthaya, dismantling the houses, stacking them on barges, and floating them down the river and thence by the canal directly to the site. He also found in Ayutthaya the large bricks that he used for the terrace, and the green Chinese tiling, which had been used as ballast on rice boats returning from China, and which he set in the parapet. Thompson completed his house in 1959.
This compound has changed considerably since I first came here, many years ago. A teak house has been erected as a large shop and museum, and opposite is another house with a restaurant and a very pleasant little cafe. But the house itself is unchanged since Jim Thompson last walked through the door, and I personally never tire of visiting it.
The story of Thompson’s disappearance is well-worn in the telling. In March 1967, Thompson was on holiday in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, staying with friends in a bungalow named Moonlight Cottage. Thompson’s friends, who were taking an afternoon nap, heard him taking a chair out onto the patio. Then they heard his footsteps briefly on the gravel path. After that, runs the story, he was neither seen nor heard in this world. It is all very appealing; a perfect mystery story. A man ascends a mountain and vanishes into thin air. Thompson’s background as a wartime spy and subsequent emergence as the Thai Silk King add the glamour, and time has done the rest.
I don’t know what happened any better than anyone else. But some while back I travelled to the Cameron Highlands on an unrelated assignment, and took some time out to do a little hunting around. I asked a taxi driver if he could find Moonlight Cottage, and as the Cameron Highlands is little more than a collection of English-style villages, he got me there easily enough. The cottage is slightly above the level of the road, hidden by trees. There is a short driveway, and we arrived quite suddenly on the front lawn. There were windows open, but no one seemed to be around. Feeling rather furtive, I took a few pictures and then got back in the car. I was there for less than five minutes. During that time I had the distinct impression that not even I could have got lost in the surrounding jungle. The house stands alone, but it is not remote. Thompson had actually got lost while walking with his host a day or so previously, but they had emerged soon enough onto the nearby golf course.
By a stroke of luck I found the journalist who had been on the spot at the time, and who had broken the story of the disappearance. A local man, he later gave up writing and when I met him he was manager of the Smokehouse Hotel, a Tudor-style building straight out of the Sussex Downs. He told me that while the search was underway they watched the skies over the jungle for circling birds, a sure sign that something (or someone) was dead amongst the trees. There were no birds. A psychic arrived on the scene and said he was receiving images of the missing man, giving a very plausible name as being instrumental in Thompson’s sudden disappearance. The psychic was not taken very seriously, but before he left he had performed an impromptu reading on the young reporter that had been so accurate that the middle-aged man now standing in the lobby of the Smokehouse was still in awe. Somebody, somewhere, knows something. But nobody has ever gone public. Maybe it is just as well —the truth might spoil a thundering good story.
Many years ago, I went with a photographer to write a feature story on the Thompson House. We went in the evening so we could get some mood shots. The custodian in those days was a man named Bill Riley, who had been one of Thompson’s friends. With the day’s visitors gone, Riley went across the compound to fetch a couple of gins. The photographer was out in the garden. I sat alone in the house, on the big couch in the living room. Everything was very quiet. I felt the skin on the back of my neck tingling. This is not a good house to be in. I don’t think it was the ghost of Jim that was bothering me: it didn’t feel like that. The house itself seemed to have a malevolent quality. It sighs and groans in the breeze. Floorboards creak overhead. The images grin blindly from their niches. It was reassuring to hear the familiar tones of the photographer swearing in the garden, and I was greatly relieved when I heard Riley, who had a gammy leg, come stamping back with the drinks. I might have put it down to my imagination, but then some years later I was talking to a director of the Jim Thompson company, an American who had recently arrived in Thailand. He told me he had slept in the house for a couple of nights, and he vowed that he would never, never do it again. He shuddered at the memory.
World History
