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“Historically, Thailand was "the Venice of the East" whereby water transport was the primary means of long distance transport of goods. If fact, the canal system in Bangkok and elsewhere was far more extensive than ever existed in Venice”. If you look at a good Bangkok map, you will be amazed at the extent of the criss-cross grid. The Thai word "klong" means "canal" and shall be used hereafter.
The 20th century saw a rapid transformation to surface vehicle transport. In fact, many of the main roads of today are just filled-in klongs. Since klongs weren't owned by anyone, loosely speaking, it was easier to fill them in to make roads than to displace people. For example, Silom, Sathorn, Phloenchit, Sukhumvit and Asoke are just a few of the filled in klongs. Many places are named after klongs, e.g., Klong Toey, Klong Tan, Marbu-Klong.
The Thai people have their cultural origins along the klongs, though this changed drastically in the 20th century.
Today, water transport still exists, but is pretty much confined to the Chao Phraya River which runs thru Bangkok and Thonburi, and a few canals which have commercial passenger boat services. These can be used to
Vendor selling crunchy scorpions for tourists In Khao San Rd
Eating Scorpions is not something that Thai people do in the daily basis. It is a touristic attraction and really you only see them in touristic areas where people are drunk enough to dare...beat the traffic, but they are also worth taking once or twice just for the cultural experience. They are very cheap and a nice tourist adventure... if you know what you're doing. O three or four klongs still have commercial passenger boat services.
Klong Saen Sap is a Bangkok canal which has a large boat service oriented to commuters, not tourists. Each long tailed boat has a capacity of more than 100 people, about 7 per bench seat. The klong stinks and the water is black (due mainly to the black clay underneath and upstream). The boats also put out smoky exhaust, so when they pass each other the air is noxious. Nonetheless, many expats enjoy taking this boat a time or two. At rush hour the boats are packed and it's often difficult to get on except at the first stop. However, on weekends and mid-day during the week, the boats are less than half full. Wait at any pier and wave it down. When you want to get off, just get up and move towards the end. The driver will stop at the next pier.
The canal goes parallel to Petchburi Rd. then turns up
Ramkamhaeng and the boat service ends at a wat a short way past Sri Nakharin. (The canal actually continues tens of kilometers further to another city, Chachoensao.) The first pier downtown is across the street from the World Trade Center just about 20 meters from Petchburi Rd. One boat line goes east towards Sri Nakharin, whereas lower ceiling boats go west (lower bridges) a few more kilometers towards the river. There is no link to the river.
Several years ago, you could switch boats again and go to the floodgate at the river or else to the train station (Hua Lampang). Those boat routes shut down around 1998.
Also, in yesteryears, you could go all the way to the airport by switching boats at a certain pier, whereby the second boat would turn into Klong Lad Prao and then go up that long, quiet, relatively clean and charming canal which is narrower and nicer than Klong Saen Sap. It ended at the Air Force Base, at a community and market, whereby you could catch a motorcycle to your terminal a short distance away. Alas, that service ended sometime around the year 2000. For more infor on the Khlong
Rama 8 Bridge- Old China Town_-14
We watched this fisherman check all his traps and pull out a couple of fish. Saen Seap Express Boat, map, schedules and tourist attractions close to the stops pls click here: http://khlongsaensaep.com/
After class chef took Scott, the new kid in class and me for a stroll to an area unreachable by plublic transportation. The north side of China Town is an area rich in temples and the only way to get there is by Tuk-Tuk or Taxi and not the BTS or the MRT get close to there. There is a river that goes across town from east to west almost from the airport to China Town where the “line” finishes. The stop was just a couple of blocks from our school cooking school across the university. We got there and Chef jump right in the boat while the boat was still going forward. He told the boat driver that he has just left ud behind. Every thing happened so quickly. The boats touch the dock and moved on. You have to be really quick if you want to board. Here is a quick clip that we took with scott's phone: [url="
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It is a wet ride on a dirty river. They have tarps on the sides so people don’t get wet
with the wakes. And it is fast and its not a sight-seeing ride. But It was a THB15 option to get to an area that other wise It would cost at least 150 Baht to get to. We were just happy to do something different. The “line” has a bunch of stops and we had to change boats to continue to our destination. There was no way that we were going to figure that one out on our own. I was very grateful chef was there to show us the way. We got out and started walking the exit is just at the “Golden Mountain”. The place that I was stock at with no transportation a couple of days ago. I wish I had known about this boat line. Anyway we walked a little bit and we were at the “Freedom Monument” wow how cool was that. 15baht across town to the unreachable area. It is not advertised in the maps and tourist do not know about it. We were so exited. Pretty soon we were in the famous “Backpacker Guetto” Khao San Road, where all the pubs are full of foreigners getting trashed, vendors selling crunchy scorpions for 50
bahts. I asked my chef if he eats one I will try it but he didn’t. It’s only another attraction for tourist. Thai people do not eat crunchy insects or crunchy scorpions. At least not the ones I got to meet so far. Just the tourist do thinking it is a cool thing to do or I don’t know what.
We walked slowly Khao San Rd that wasn’t so crazy yet I guess because it was still day time, we walked thourght the souvenir shops where everything is cheap, saw the tattoo shops and the vendors selling fake ID cards. Pretty quickly we made it to the Chao Praya River. And there was my bridge. The beautiful Rama 8 Bridge. There were aerobics going on and lots of local action. We sat down and chilled waiting for the sunset. We watched a guy catch cat fish with his net and then we moved on to get a better angle of the bridge just next to the boat station. N13. We waited for sunset. I ran out of battery took my last shot and we all hoped on the boat back to the BTS to head home. It
Drunken tourist trying the scorpions- Old China Town_-6
I took a photo of them taking photos of themselves eating deep fried scorpions and approached to ask them what did it taste like and pretty soon I notice they were drunk out or their mind...of course! was a cool day. And it opened a whole new way to get to that part of town! More places to see now.
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