intimidated. While you are exploring, you might be
surprised to learn that the city’s origins are relatively recent. It began as a sleepy trading post, straddling the Chao Phraya River, in the Ayutthaya Kingdom, which existed from 1350 to 1767. After Ayutthaya was sacked by Burmese
invaders, King Taksin built a new capital. Years later, his successor, Rama I, moved the capital directly across the river and Bangkok began to flourish. With the arrival of cars in the 20th
Skyscraper in Bangkok Bangkok Convention 2012
There are two Bangkoks. One is a timeless city of canals and temples; the other is a metropolis of high-rises, traffic jams and 21st Century hustle. Plan to visit both during the 2012 RI Convention.
M
ore than 200 years ago, King Rama I dubbed Bangkok ‘Krung Thep Mahanakhon’, the City
of Angels. Today, wander through the jasmine-scented lobbies of some of the city’s five-star hotels and you might indeed think you have entered a Southeast Asian paradise. Float down the Chao Phraya River at sunrise in a gondola, past the finger-like Khmer-style pagoda known as Wat Arun, Temple of the Dawn, and you will likely experience a similar sense of transcendence. Bangkok has vibrancy and a
cosmopolitan flavour akin to that of New York or London, with all the pleasures that major cities have to offer: luxurious accommodation, pulsating night clubs, terrific shopping and fine restaurants. Beneath its Asian Tiger façade, however, Bangkok maintains the feel of a sprawling urban village, moving to its own timeless rhythms and steeped in tropical exoticism. Those steel-and-glass office towers and traffic-choked eight-lane avenues conceal alleys, filled with gilded temples, or wats, sinuous khlongs, or canals, and rickety wooden stands selling fruit and noodles.
26
www.ribi.org | December 2011
City of contrasts Now, this city of contrasts is getting
ready to welcome an expected 30,000 Rotarians from around the world for the 103rd RI Convention. Noraseth Pathmanand, Chair of the Host Organisation Committee, offers his welcome to Convention goers: “This RI Convention is a first for Thai Rotarians, who will extend their hospitality to the international Rotary family in Bangkok, an intriguing mix of the modern and the ancient, with endless attractions, culture and beauty. A majority of those in the host area, more than 5,000, will be on hand to greet international guests at the airport.” The Convention will take place at the
Impact Exhibition and Convention Centre, one of Asia’s largest convention facilities. About a 30-minute ride from the city centre, the venue offers modern amenities like the Royal Jubilee Ballroom, where special lunches are planned. For travel around the city itself,
convention goers will find many public transportation options to be inexpensive, well run, air-conditioned and easy to navigate. Since more and more Thais speak some English, visitors should not be
Century, city planners began filling Bangkok’s khlongs and paving the roads. The influx of American GIs during the Vietnam War kicked off a tourism explosion. In the 1980s and 1990s, an Asian investment boom attracted hundreds of multinational corporations, transforming Bangkok into the financial, cultural, fashion and entertainment hub of Southeast Asia.
Chinatown You can learn something of Bangkok’s
history by starting a city tour in the riverside Phra Nakhon District, where King Rama IX’s predecessors lived until the beginning of the 20th Century. The best place to find unspoiled
traces of old Bangkok is across the river in Thonburi, the pre-Bangkok capital founded by King Taksin. Hire a canopied wooden longboat and, with a guide, cross the muddy, olive-coloured river. As the skipper revs up his diesel engine, pirated from a World War II-era Japanese truck, and turns upstream, you will pass the rusting tin roofs of Bangkok’s Chinatown, the largest in Asia outside China itself. Cruise up Thonburi’s main khlong,
marking the original course of the Chao Phraya River. Here is a rare surviving corner of the Venice of the East, a side of the city that few tourists ever see. Mile after mile of teakwood houses perch on pilings, extending down into the murky green water and surrounded by dense gardens. Behind groves of banyan trees rise magnificent wats, many with golden stupas and intricate tile roofs that sweep sharply upward into thin gilded phoenixes, symbols of reincarnation. At moments like these, Bangkok does, indeed, feel like a City of Angels. n
Joshua Hammer
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52