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Buddhist Temples are everywhere in Thailand. There’s a lot to learn about them. And this one in particular is quite peculiar.

BUDDHIST TEMPLES

As you cut through the Thai countryside, you will see many temple complexes with glimmering structures, intricate details, and immaculate spaces. Buddhist temples in Thailand are known as “wats“, meaning an enclosure, and generally contain 7 or 8 types of buildings, each of which have their own symbolic, ceremonial, or practical importance.

The largest building is usually the Ubosot, or Ordination Hall, which usually contains the main images of the Buddha and illustrations of the stories of the Buddha’s life on richly decorated walls, windows, gables, and doors. The tiered roofs to maintain a grand and elevated aesthetic over the large areas they cover, and you will see the blade-like pointed finials at the ends of the roof that take various sculpted forms of the head of the Naga – a serpentine dragon – or the Geruda – a humanoid bird. The Ubosot is usually surrounded by 8 Sema Stones – one at each corner and mid-way along the wall – to delineate the consecrated area of the Ubosot. They are often housed in small but ornate pedestals, and another Sema Stone is also buried under the Ubosot before it is built.

The most eye-catching structures are usually the large Stupa or Pagoda – usually the bell-shaped monolith, often coated or painted with gold, but which can vary markedly in style and shape. These structures enshrine important relics of the Buddha (such as bones, teeth, or hair) and sometimes of kings or other important people. It seems that the larger they are, the better, and they can get rather large indeed!

You may occasionally notice a tall chimney: these stem from a crematorium, with cremation being the preferred burial right for Thai buddhists. Other structures you may see include bell-towers used to summon monks to their devotions, libraries built in ponds or on high structures to protect scriptures from insects and fire, and the Kuti – or monk’s dwellings.

Keep an eye out for the occasional large fig-like tree amidst the buildings. This is ficus religiosa – the “Bhodi tree”. In Bodh Gaya in Northern India stands the original Bhodi tree under which the Buddha meditated for 7 days without moving and achieved illumination (or “Bhodi”), and the Bhodi trees you may see are planted with seeds descending from this original.

WAT SISRATHONG

You’ll notice that we’re passing a lot of temple complexes, but Wat Sisrathong is interesting because it is dedicated to the worship of Phra Rahu, the God of Darkness. In Thai legends, Pra Rahu is an immortal giant that periodically eats his brothers – the sun and the moon. That is to say, he’s the cheeky one behind solar and lunar eclipses. Black is his shade, and he likes grapes, liquor, coffee, jelly, sticky rice, beans, cake, or preserved eggs, because they’re also all black. If you want to make an offering to him, you’ll have to place 8 items – and it has to be 8 – of one of his favourite foods upon his alter. Then your dark days will be over!

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There’s a strange little museum tucked away out here, but I think it deserves a mention.

There are a few of these big old Royal State Railways of Siam steam engines you’ll see scattered beside the tracks on this trip, and throughout the Thai rail network. But these particular ones are actually part of a rather surprising museum a little down the road. The Jesada Technik Museum is a 500-odd strong private collection of vintage rare cars, motorbikes, boats, amphibious craft, and aeroplanes created by a transport mogul named Jesada Deshsakulrith. Most of his cars are in the category you might call “cute” – the inexpensive European bubble-car varieties (of which there are surprisingly more than I thought) – and are in immaculate condition. He also boasts a couple of London Double-decker Buses, New York taxis, and a Back-To-The-Future-esque Dolorean. Jeseda only started collecting in 1997 and it opened to the public in 2007, the same year he bought a decommissioned Soviet whiskey-class submarine, which unfortunately sunk off the Swedish coast while being towed enroute to this museum. If you’re a bit of a automobile enthusiast, perhaps go check it out on the way back. If you don’t have time, you can now walk through the sprawling collection in his hangar using Google street-view – just look up Jeseda Technik Museum on Google Maps when you get online.

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For a small town, Salaya has plenty going on.

SALAYA

The small town of Salaya is noted for three things. Foremost is the grand Phuttamonthon park hosting the world’s tallest freestanding buddha, which we’ll talk about in a minute. Second, it is a university town with a few colleges, as well as a large peri-urban campus of the renowned Mahibol University, which is an offshoot of the Siraraj Medical School located next to the Old Thonburi station which you may have visited earlier. Finally, you should see Chong Thanon Salaya Market right next to the train station. Thailand’s markets are legendary. While many of Bangkok’s markets are tourist-oriented, most mid-sized markets like this act as focal points for the Kingdom’s communities. This one in particular is said to have great samosas, and an interesting sort of steamed pancake.

THE PHUTTHAMONTON PARK

Through the trees and buildings, you just might be able to get a glimpse of the world’s highest freestanding statue of Buddha from the train line. The 52ft high cast of a walking Buddha casts a silhouette against the sky at day. It is attributed to the Corrado Feroci – an Italian born sculptor of many of Bangkok’s most famous monuments, and founder of Silpakorn University of Fine Arts – but it was cast in 1981, almost 20 years after his death. The statue sits bang in the middle of a 400 hectare park that is popular both for worshipers as well as runners and cyclists. If you need to stretch your legs and are happy to take the next train, the park sits adjascent to a modest botanical gardens and the campus of Mahidol University – one of Thailand’s most reputed.

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One night in Bangkok and the world’s… your… oyster…

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit is the longest city name in the world. It translates to “City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Visvakarman at Indra’s behest.”

That pretty much describes Bangkok: Big, messy, complicated, and lots going on. Incidentally, Visvakarman and Indra are principle deities in Hinduism and Buddhism respectively. The 9 gems refers to the auspicious combination of diamond, ruby, emerald, yellow sapphire, garnet, blue sapphire, pearl, topaz and cat’s eye - essentially Thailand’s crown jewels.

Bangkok is like Thailand’s beating heart.

It is the central node around and through which the economy, politics, and society ebbs and flows. And its Thailand’s portal to the rest of the world, which is why the Kings that held the mouth of the Chao Phraya became the Kings of Siam.

Bangkok is kind of a big deal even by international standards. It regularly exceeds even Paris and New York for the number of international visitors. There are more high-rises in Bangkok than any US city except New York. Were Thailand a wealthier country, Bangkok would be listed amongst the world’s most powerful and influential cities.
Bangkok is truly one of those cities - like Paris, New York, or Tokyo - that can take a weekend to see, but needs a lifetime to truly know and fully appreciate.

Bangkok is also Thailand’s black hole.

22% of Thais live here - over 14 million people - which, for an agrarian country, is kinda insane. Its a classic example of a “primate city” - a city that is disproportionately larger and more important than any other in its country. And as Thailand continues to grow - at around 4 to 5% per year on average - so does Bangkok grow even more disproportionately. It engulfs the surrounding countryside slowly, but is sucking in the whole country’s energy, including Thailand’s young people. There’s now just so much “stuff” in Bangkok that the city is sinking into its floodplain - around and inch every year on average. A tropical floodplain is a terrible place to put a Bangkok.

Bangkok is truly one of those cities like Paris, New York, or Tokyo, that it can take a weekend to see, but would take a lifetime to truly know and appreciate. I can’t really do it justice in this humble format, but I’ll leave it at this: If you’re leaving Bangkok and are happy about it, you probably didn’t do it right. If you’re arriving into Bangkok, my advice is to scrutinise where you’re getting your information about where to go and what to see – following the tourist crowd will probably lead to disappointment. There are so many authentic, fascinating, and energetic parts of the city to explore if you go against the flow.

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Tailing Chan is where the Thonburi branch merges, is a new BTS hub, and a sight of a nasty train crash!

THONBURI BRANCH

It is here that there is a little fork in the road. One track to Thonburi Station – or Bangkok Noi – and the other loops around Bangkok and down to Hua Lumphong Station from the North.

TAILING CHAN CRASH

At dawn on 21 August 1979, a train very similar to yours approached this rail junction. A freight train was coming from the North from Bang Sue Junction and either did not receive or did not notice the red light. The junction manager said he saw the driver of the freight train ‘frantically waving from the engine’s window’. It was too late. The freight train collided into the rear end of the passenger train in the middle of the intersection. Both trains derailed. There were 51 deaths and 138 injured. Many of the passengers were students heading to school from Thonburi Station. The accident was one of the most horrific rail disasters in Thailand, and was the second major incident in Thailand that year after a fuel-laden tanker train also ran into a passenger train, sparking an inferno in an adjacent market… So uh, yeah. Have a nice trip!

THE MIGHTY BTS

You should be able to see the very latest extensions to Bangkok’s elevated train system. From the mid-80s, the numbers of cars in Bangkok was rising by around one-third every year, leaving the city with a catatonically slow average traffic speed of 10km per hour by the beginning of the 90s. So an ambitious plan was developed in 1991 to build up! … The plan was then axed when the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis sapped the Thai economy funds and too little progress was being made. But the experiment with the megolithic use of concrete seemed to be a hit, and was a central theme of the next plan and its modern iterations. This is no doubt to the delight of Thailand’s cement and construction companies, as well as landholders near the BTS lines who invariably see leaps in prices as the Thai middle class lap up adjacent condominiums … The BTS has certainly changed the character of Bangkok – sometimes negatively… but each new line can move 25,000 people per hour in each direction, and this has probably saved Bangkok (from itself).

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Chao Phraya translates to “the Chief”, such is the importance of this River to the Thai Nation.

It is along this river that international trade emerged between the river capital of Ayutthaya (and later Bangkok) and the great civilisations of Asia. From this maritime trade, the Kingdom on the Chief River became the most wealthy in the River basin. With his wealth, the Ayutthaya Kingdom was able to build canals to the neighbouring rivers, allowing to extend their irrigation systems, and also transport their influence to dominate other Kingdoms and Chiefdoms, eventually forming the great Kingdom that continues to thrive today.

You aren’t likely to see the Chao Phraya much, as when the train gets close enough, your views may be blocked by its natural levies or human development on its shoreline. But the Chao Phraya and the rivers that feed it will never be far on the Northern Line.

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Where the train lines diverge between North and South is as good a place as any to tell you a bit about both.

THE NORTHERN LINE

The Northern Line was the first line that King Chulalongkorn built when he founded Thailand’s rail system in the early 1900s. It took 16 years to build to its current extent, and totally changed Thailand. Before this train, getting from here to Chiang Mai woudl mean weeks of travel – by riverboat or muddy bullock cart up through the floodplains, and then over mountainous roads into the Northern highlands. The Northern Line reduced that trip down to a couple of days, and now takes about 12 hours. The reduction in the time and cost of transport meant that, economically, large new tracts of Thailand’s hinterlands – and particularly the agricultural heartland of the Chaophraya River basin – was brought into the global economic trading network that Thailand had established over the centuries. Politically, it meant that the Siamese capital could better communicate with, and project its central power into, the restive northern areas, and demonstrate to its expansionist colonial neighbours that its borders could be enforced and Thailand was not to be trifled with.

THE SOUTHERN LINE

The turnoff towards the West loops us, eventually, towards the South. It too has helped bring new economic connectivity, central political legitimacy, and security to the southern reaches of Thailand, but to a lesser extent as it follows the ancient maritime trading routes along the coast of Thailand down to its southern neighbours in the Malay Peninsular.

The line connects all the way down to Singapore (previously it took you all the way into central Singapore, but they’ve moved the railhead to the North of Singapore Island, just across the causeway). It would take an uncomfortable day and a half by regular Thai and Malay services to get there, and you could do it for about $50.

The luxury option is the Eastern & Oriental Express. They have trains departing once or twice a month heading from Singapore to Bangkok and back, taking either three or 4 days, depending on the direction you go. The service commenced in 1992 by the same people who operate the Venice-Simplon Orient Express in Europe. Generously refurbished Japanese coaches feature two dining cars, a lounge car, a piano bar car, a saloon car with a reading room and a small boutique, and an open-air observation deck at the rear of the train, which is perfect for us window seaters. Tickets start at a couple of US dollars each way, depending on the time of year and your birthing.

OTHER LINES

The infamous “Death Railway”, originally built in WWII by the Japanese, and which sets the scene for the famous book and movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, splits off the Southern Line after Nakhon Pathom. The Eastern lines, which head to Nong Khai (connecting to Vientiane, Laos), and Ubon Ratchathani, split off later, a bit north of Ayutthaya. The lines to Aranyaprathet (near the Cambodian border) and Pattaya split off further south.

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Its not a thrilling sight, but Bang Sue junction is about to become rather important place for Thai rail travel, and its an interesting case study on how Thai’s like to build things.

Bang Sue Junction:

From here, the rail line splits off West toward the South. It also connects to the Bangkok underground MRT line, and serves many city bus lines.

They’re currently building a large 5-level Bang Sue Central Station. It will have twenty-four 600-meter long platforms, and will eventually replace Hua Lumphong as the terminal station for all State Railway lines, moving train travel out of the inner city entirely

:'( We love Hua Lumphong. It will be sorely missed.

The Library Train:

You might see a well-decorated train carriage on the side of the tracks. Its actually a library for homeless children. The project was initiated in 1999 by the Royal Thai Police to offer basic education services to homeless children living in the Bang Sue area. There’s another one down in Hua Lumphong.

:’) Gosh we love the State Railways of Thailand!

A cement city:

You might be able to see the headquarters of Siam Cement Group (SCG) – the largest cement company in Southeast Asia, and the 4th largest company in Thailand. The Thai construction industry seems to absolutely love cement. A humble metro station looks like an aircraft carrier. Look how much of it is around Bang Sue Junction!

Interestingly, Siam Cement was founded by a royal decree, and is still 30% owned and controlled by the Crown.

TIPS:

Coming into Bangkok?: If you’re arriving into Bangkok from further afield, this might be the stop to get off thanks to its links to the MRT, and its proximity to the BTS – the two metro lines in Bangkok. Otherwise, the terminal station is also on the MRT, and its a nice place, so you should go check it out.

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Bangkok is a not-so-ancient seat of the Thai Royal court, and you may be passing a surprising and important palace.

Wang Dusit:

The “Celestial Dwelling” forms the main administrative centre of the Thai kingdom. Established by King Chulalongkorn, Dusit Palace was once outside of town and offered space, eventually becoming the primary residence of the kings. Unfortunately, its not visible from the train. But you may be able to see its moat and some of the King’s Royal Guards guarding it.

Chitralada Palace was a residence of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama the 9th) – a man with a keen interest in agriculture. He turned the palace grounds is also an operational farm, and its still possible to purchase products under the Chitralada Projects brand. We recommend the famous milk candies, and its honey, which you may be able to find in convenience stores, or at the airport.

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On your way through Bangkok, you might be thinking its a rather messy city, with tangles of cables, tight squeezes, and dirty canals. But there’s more than meets the eye.

The tangles of cables:

Microsoft founder Bill Gates once got on social media to say that they were a sign of “energy poverty”, and evidence of people stealing electricity from the grid. But thats not true. Rather private utilities companies hire the poles from the metropolitan or provincial electricity authorities, and their competing interests mean that they tend not to coordinate and share cables like in other countries.

It may look dangerous, but most are just telephone and internet wires with very low voltages. The higher voltage wires are placed higher up, in relative safety. They can become dangerous when vehicles collide with them, and the weight of all the cables can drag down multiple poles.

Most Thai people are willing to shrug it off the unsightly appearance as a necessary price for modern amenities.

The tight squeezes:

One of the few points for which the Thai rail system is famous is the precious little space left between the passing trains and the structures on either side. Space is short in Bangkok. The railway tracks are built on public land, so its up to the Thai authorities to tell people to vacate it. But I guess they don’t have the heart to do so, and the only convincing argument is made by a moving train.

In Maeklong – a town to the southwest of Bangkok – locals have a regular wet market where fresh fruit and vegetables are actually laid over the train tracks. When the train’s horn blows, awnings are withdrawn, produce is shifted, people disperse, before a slow-moving train pushes through a still space that was a briefly before a heaving mass of activity.

The stinky canals:

Bangkok was once referred to as “the Venice of the East” due to its sprawling network of “Klong”. They still serve a vital function for Bangkok for sewage disposal, transport, and flood mitigation.

The Klong Saen Saep, which we cross just outside of Hua Lumphong Station, was built by King Rama the 3rd in 1837 to transport soldiers during a conflict between Siam and Annam over Cambodia. It connects the Chao Phraya river to the Prachin Buri and Chachaoengsao rivers. The portion of the canal you should be able to see has an express boat service that cuts through and churns rather dodgy smelling water today, but its interesting to note that it was once so abundant with lotus flowers that King Mongkut built the Lotus Pond Palace on its banks.

TIPS:

Take a real klong ferry in Bangkok: No trip to Bangkok is complete without a canal boat ride. But avoid those people offering to take you to a water market – you will see no such thing. Rather, do as the locals do and take a canal ferry ride! It will cost you less than a dollar, and you will see just as much of Bangkok, as well as a more authentic slice of modern Bangkok life.

Don’t put your hand out the window: In the train stations, you might like to keep an eye out for the rather gruesome painted scenes of what happens to people who do.

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