Everything on the site, by section
Twenty guides across seven sections. This is the full list; the front page carries a selection.
The river, and the working day it keeps
- The first paved road was cut for people who wanted to driveCharoen Krung was paved in 1864 because the foreign community asked for somewhere to take a carriage. It set the line the modern city grew along.
- A commuter service that still beats the trafficThe Chao Phraya express boats run to flag colours rather than a timetable, and for a stretch of the city they remain the fastest way north.
- The canals were filled in and the drainage went with themBangkok was a canal city. Most of the klongs became roads in the twentieth century, and the flooding that follows is the direct consequence.
A city that could not dig, so it built upward
- The ground was too soft to tunnel, so the railway went over the roadThe BTS opened in 1999 on a viaduct above existing avenues because Bangkok's alluvial soil made cut-and-cover expensive and slow.
- The underground got built anyway, and it cost moreThe MRT opened in 2004 beneath the same soft ground the Skytrain avoided, at a much higher price per kilometre.
- The malls grew until they touched the platformsBangkok's shopping centres connect directly to Skytrain stations by walkway, which has reorganised where the city's ground floor actually is.
Where the city buys things, and when
- Chinatown eats at night because it worked all dayYaowarat's street food economy runs after dark, on a street laid out in the nineteenth century for a trading community that is still there.
- A weekend market big enough to need a street planChatuchak runs to thousands of stalls arranged in numbered sections, which is the only reason anybody finds anything twice.
- The floating market outlived the trade that made itDamnoen Saduak was a working canal market before it became a photographed one, and the boats still carry the same goods.
The food is regional and the regions argue
- Khao soi is a Chiang Mai dish, and the north argues about itA curried noodle soup with Burmese and Yunnanese lineage, served with crisp noodles on top and pickled mustard greens beside it.
- Isaan sent its labour to Bangkok and its food came tooSom tam and grilled Isaan food followed migrant workers into the capital, where they became ordinary rather than regional.
- A street stall got a star and the queue changed shapeJay Fai's Bangkok shophouse received a Michelin star in 2018. The cooking did not change; the waiting did.
Two coasts, six months apart
- The Andaman and the Gulf take turns being unswimmableThe southwest monsoon works the Andaman side from roughly May, the northeast monsoon works the Gulf from roughly November, which is why the two coasts have opposite seasons.
- The hottest month is the one everybody throws water inSongkran falls in April at the end of the dry season, when the heat peaks and the rains have not arrived.
- The rain sets the planting and the planting sets the yearThe main rice crop is timed to the monsoon rather than the calendar, and the agricultural year still runs on it.
The capital before this one
- Portuguese, Japanese and Persian streets in one bend of the riverSeventeenth-century Ayutthaya housed foreign communities in distinct quarters downstream of the palace, each with its own religious buildings.
- The capital burned and the court moved downriverAyutthaya fell in 1767 and the Siamese capital relocated south, first to Thonburi and then across the river to Bangkok.
- A tree grew around a sandstone head and kept itThe bodhi roots at Wat Mahathat closed around a fallen Buddha head. It is the most photographed object in the city and nobody records when it fell.
The things a visitor notices before anyone explains them
- Every building has a smaller building beside itThe san phra phum sits outside houses, offices and petrol stations alike, sited by rule rather than taste, and it is maintained daily.
- The river gets one night of floating lightsLoi Krathong falls on the twelfth lunar full moon, when small floats are set on the water. In the north it runs alongside the lantern festival.