Bangkok noi5/15/2023 Three sons of Rama II were born here, two of who would become king as Rama iii and Rama IV, while the third would become Second King Pinklao. (They won’t even let me in, although possibly they can’t be faulted on that.) Now known as Wang Derm, or Former Palace, it was occupied after Taksin’s time by a succession of princes. These invitations are very, very hard to get if you are a non-Thai. Taksin’s palace has been absorbed into the fort compound and is similarly off-limits except to the occasional specialist tour that has to be invited in. The fort is the home of the Royal Thai Navy, which fies the flag of its commander-in-chief here and fires offsalvos from its cannon on state occasions. Wichaiprasit Fort, however, is visible only from the Chao Phraya River, and the landward approach will reveal only a massive gate guarded by what must be some of the friendliest-looking sentries in the business. Taksin’s moat still exists and it is possible to follow its course all the way across the heart of Thonburi, a journey that can be accomplished on foot within an hour and which will pass some of the old city’s most historic sites, skirting the naval dockyards before the canal finally runs to ground just before reaching Klong Bangkok Noi, the waterway having been filled in at this point by Rama V for the building of Thonburi Railway Station. As a protection from marauders, he had the safest place in the kingdom. Taksin made this area his royal court, building his palace directly next to Wichaiprasit Fort, with Wat Arun as his immediate neighbour on the other side. These three temples had all existed since the Ayutthaya era, with no one really knowing when they were founded, and indeed at this period they were all known by different names to those of today. Yai next to Wat Molilokkayaram, and the waterway passing behind Wat Arun, running parallel to the river until it reached Klong Bangkok Noi, at Wat Amarin. When King Taksin established Thonburi as his capital he took the original fortified area and strengthened it by having a canal dug as a moat, the southern end connecting to Klong Bangkok On the east bank of the river, the Bangkok side, the corresponding fort built by the French is an enormous star-shape, and outside of this, again, the land is marked as farms and orchards. Clearly, Money Town had been essentially for officialdom and the military, while the community that depended upon it had lived largely outside the walls, on the river and alongside the canals, for this was the era when ordinary folk dwelled upon the water rather than on the usually marshy land. With the fort at its southeast corner, a rectangle of fortifications spreads back almost as far as Klong Bangkok Noi, and outside of this rectangle the land is marked as being agricultural. King Narai’s Wichaiprasit Fort, built in the 1660s and expanded by the French under the naval officer Chevalier de Forbin, sits formidably at the mouth of Klong Bangkok Yai, a watchful presence for ships heading upriver to Ayutthaya. The earliest maps of Thonburi, dating from the latter half of the seventeenth century, show a very modest sized township. This walk takes us through the earliest part of the Thonburi settlement, when it was a customs port and garrison town for the capital of Ayutthaya, further upriver.
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