I Grew Up Along Bangkok’s Canals — Here’s How Its Rich History Connects to the Forward-thinking City

Bangkok’s first boundary was described in water. When King Rama I established the capital in 1782, it was on an island his predecessor had made by cutting a canal across a peninsula in the Chao Phraya River. But when I drift through the city today, it’s easy for me to forget this defining relationship between land and water. Easy to be lost among malls with names that signal their preeminence (Paragon, Centralworld) or their sparkle (Palladium, Platinum). But then, when I cross a bridge over the Saen Saep Canal, my attention is drawn to the brown water and the commuter boat passing beneath me. I imagine following the boat upriver, past stilt homes, open-air markets, and temples, before it enters another neighborhood: my childhood.

In Bangkok, one is never far from water. Canals, or khlong, lace the land, as they have since the 15th century, when they were used to bring water to rice fields, farmers to markets, and people to one another. Behind my boyhood home in the Prawet district was a canal, alongside which ran a concrete walkway that served both as a shortcut between streets and an avenue to my childish diversions. On any given afternoon, I might find taxi drivers kicking a sepak takraw, a woven ball, over a net strung between telephone poles, or be drawn to a street market, where I would get my sugar fix from rambutan and rose apple. 

Visitors to Thailand can still find that old way of life on a canal tour of the Thon Buri district. On a recent Sunday afternoon, I joined a group of friends on one such excursion, boarding a boat from Saphan Taksin pier. We traveled through a quiet suburban neighborhood, stopping at the Paknam Phasi Charoen Temple, a landmark known for its 20-story-tall Buddha, which towers over its surroundings. Next was the Artist House, a bohemian café and gallery. Standing inside, looking at its timber stilts and shutters, displays of traditional khon masks, and shaved ice in flavors named “red” and “green,” I felt like I’d entered a scene calibrated for authenticity.

To me, the place recalled Kaew Kap Kla, a schoolbook everybody in my generation remembers reading at the impressionable age of six. It taught us how to read Thai while simultaneously teaching us what it meant to be Thai, telling the story of a family of four (every member had smiling eyes) who lived in a stilt home beside rice fields. They had water buffalo, a charcoal stove, and a new puppy. The book’s bucolic illustrations seemed to capture a shared, idealized past that served as a stage for our shared, idealized identity. But the Thailand that the storybook siblings grew up in doesn’t square with the present most of us inhabit. For today’s city dwellers, an authentically Thai experience probably isn’t a trip down Memory Canal, but an afternoon at the mall.

Many of the waterways have now been filled in, paved over, or hidden from view. Thailand’s generally bad track record of historical preservation means that the replacement of the old by the new is not uncommon. A friend recently lamented that in Thailand, unlike Japan or India, we don’t have a culture of wearing traditional dress except for special events. This is partly a result of the Thai court, which adopted European customs and dress at the end of the 19th century to appear more “civilized” to Western powers. 

But even more contemporary expressions of “Thainess,” like the country’s unique Modernist buildings (inspired by Brutalism but incorporating Thai motifs), are disappearing. A recent example: the closure of the Scala Cinema, Bangkok’s last stand-alone movie theater. For its final show, Scala screened Cinema Paradiso, the story of an old movie theater and the pull of nostalgia. My regular badminton hall was converted from another movie theater. The hand-painted posters for Cleopatra and Mackenna’s Gold remained on the walls until, in 2018, it was finally bulldozed. To me, the actors’ faces were like portraits of respected elders: Elizabeth Taylor and Omar Sharif watching over the games, patrons of good play. Now they, too, are gone.

But a city that’s bad at preservation is also proving to be good at reinvention. When it opened inside a renovated Chinatown shop-house, Tep Bar began welcoming live bands, specializing in groups that make modern Thai music on traditional instruments. Along the west bank of the Chao Phraya River, a historic dock and warehouse were reopened as Lhong 1919, a hangout with art shops, restaurants, and an exhibition on the venue’s restoration.

The trend isn’t exclusive to the oldest sections of the city. The House on Sathorn, first a private residence and later the Russian embassy, is now a restaurant and event space. Last year saw the expansion of Benjakitti Park on a downtown plot of land once used by the state-owned tobacco monopoly. The park’s new section uses wetland plants to cleanse water fed from nearby canals, and the former factory buildings have been converted into sports facilities. 

No recap of the remaking of Thailand’s past could be complete without mentioning Bupphesanniwat, or Love Destiny, a hugely successful soap opera that follows a woman whose consciousness is transported into the body of a 17th-century courtier. Now Love Destiny pilgrims turn up by the busload at the ruins of Ayutthaya, the moated ancient capital, to be photographed in period costume.

I never did learn to read from Kaew Kap Kla. Because I was at an international school, where English was predominant, my proficiency in Thai stalled for years. With a Thai-Chinese mother and an American father, my background excluded me from easy identification with those fictional children. When I did learn to read, it was through Japanese Doraemon comics, which, because I first encountered them in translation, I thought were Thai. Doraemon is not entirely cat or robot, not entirely of our time or his own, and maybe contemporary Thainess is like that, not entirely one thing or another. 

One of Doraemon’s chaotic gadgets is a handkerchief that can make new things old or old things new, with a logic that has never made sense to me. Bangkok, with its roads laid out along canal routes, with its juxtaposition of popular and high culture, of luxury stores and open-air markets, is a city of unreconciled contradictions. But in allowing its past to be buried and built over, Thailand has also created the vibrancy and dynamism of its present — just as the foundations for the capital’s first roads were built with earth dug from those early canals.

Best Time to Go to Beat the Crowds

Humidity is at its highest during the monsoon months, from June through September. But the off-season also means visitors will likely find discounted accommodations and can easily get in to top-rated restaurants and popular sites. Just be prepared to pivot: Downpours could impact boat service and island access, and even cause hotel closures.

A version of this story first appeared in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Go With the Flow.”