Reading Bangkok 9789971695460

Citation preview

Reading Bangkok

Reading Bangkok

Ross King

© 2011 Ross King Published by: NUS Press National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Fax: (65) 6774-0652 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.nus.edu.sg/nuspress ISBN 978-9971-69-546-0 (Paper) All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data King, Ross. Reading Bangkok / Ross King. – Singapore : NUS Press, c2011. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN : 978-9971-69-546-0 (pbk.) 1. Urban geography – Thailand – Bangkok – History. 2. Urbanization – Thailand – Bangkok – History. 3. Human geography – Thailand – Bangkok – History. I. Title. DS589.B2 307.7609593 — dc22

OCN696042797

Cover image: Bangkok: The Erawan shrine, the BTS Skytrain and the Zen tower of Central World Plaza, destroyed in the 19 May 2010 red-shirt uprising. The caption on Zen reads: “We love you Zen” and, on the Skytrain, it reads: “Bangkok city of life”. Typeset by : Scientifik Graphics Printed by : C.O.S. Printers

To memories: May and Jim, Linda and Sully

Contents List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgements

xvii

Prologue

xix

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Epilogue

Landscapes of Illusion and the First Level of Colonisation: Thonburi-Kudijeen, Rattanankosin, Ratchadamnoen

1

Landscapes of the Modern Age and the Second Level of Colonisation: Charoen Krung, Silom, Ratchadamnoen

43

Libidinal Landscapes and the Third Level of Colonisation: Sukhumvit

87

Landscapes of Ruin and the Fourth Level of Colonisation: Ratchadapisek, the Khlong Toei slums

126

Landscapes of the Mind and the Fifth Level of Colonisation: The Universities

166

The City Unmasked

199

Glossary

210

Notes

213

Bibliography

223

Index

240

vii

List of Illustrations Prologue Emblematic spaces: Thonburi, Rattanakosin and Thanon Ratchadamnoen (Chapter 1), Thanon Charoen Krung (Chapter 2), the Sukhumvit corridor (Rama I, Phloenchit, Sukhumvit) (Chapter 3), Ratchadapisek and the Khlong Toei slums (Chapter 4). (The themes of Chapter 5 are more ubiquitous.)

xxx

Chapter 1 Figure 1.1

The Maenam Chao Phraya: (a) conjectured course prior to 1534 and its subsequent interventions; (b) the present course.

3

Thonburi and Rattanakosin: the city before the era of the thanon (roads). The future paths of the initiating, emblematic roads (Charoen Krung, Bamruang Muang/Rama I and Ratchadamnoen) and the future form of Sanam Luang are indicated.

10

Thonburi: traces from the King Taksin and early Rattanakosin eras.

13

Thonburi as panorama of inconsistencies: from the (Rama I) Memorial Bridge looking northwards.

14

Wat Arun as cultural fusion: Khmer-influenced form, Hindu iconography, Chinese decoration.

16

Muslim Thonburi: (a) Tonson Mosque (Sunni); (b) Phradungtham Islam Mosque (Shi’a).

18

Figure 1.7

Wat Kalayanamit Woramawihan: Thai and Chinese.

19

Figure 1.8

Santa Cruz Church (1916, architects Annibale Rigotti and Mario Tamagno).

20

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6

ix

x

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.9

Figure 1.10

Figure 1.11

Figure 1.12

Figure 1.13

Figure 1.14

Figure 1.15

Still confronting: (a) King Taksin (with the present Queen Sirikit), “… an antagonistic statement towards the Chakri dynasty”, and (b) Rama I, memorialised at their respective ends of the Memorial Bridge and Thanon Prachathipok, named for Rama VII. King Taksin, of course, would more likely have mounted an elephant.

23

Architectural ambiguity and layered symbolism of Rama V: the Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, Royal Grand Palace (1876–1882, architect John Chinitz).

24

Rama V and re-styling the regime: the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (1907–1915, architects Annibale Rigotti and Mario Temagno).

26

The continuing Europisation of Bangkok: (a) Hualampong Railway Station (1910–1912, architect Mario Temagno); (b) Baan Norasingh (now Government House, office of the Prime Minister, 1923, architect Annibale Rigotti).

27

The neo-Classical Ministry of Defence, symbolic military hardware now politely averted from the Royal Grand Palace — the power structure becomes explicit. The spire in the background marks the location of Lak Muang, the City Pillar, foundation point of the city.

29

Superimpositions, layered space: Wat Mahathat, shophouses, amulet market, as popular Buddhism is superimposed on royal/institutional Buddhism.

31

Muddled Bangkok space. While the images of Figure 1.14 amply display the layered space of Bangkok streets, such layering will commonly take three forms: (a and b) visual layering (Khaosan); (c and d) functional layering (Sukhumvit and Pahurat); and (e and f ) symbolic layering (Buddhism and Christmas at Paragon Centre, reinforced royalty over Ratchadamnoen as site of democratic upheaval and fascist oppression).

32

List of Illustrations

xi

Chapter 2 Figure 2.1

Figure 2.2

Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4

Figure 2.5

Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7

Figure 2.8

Charoen Krung and its juxtapositions: Rattanakosin, Pahurat, Sampheng, the European intrusions then, beyond, Rama III’s junk wat to commemorate the passing of the Chinese trade.

47

Shades of Chinatown: (a) The Odeon Circle at the junction of Thanons Charoen Krung and Yaowarat with right to left: the emblematic pailou (Chinese gateway), the (Thai) Wat Traimit (Temple of the Golden Buddha) and Chinese shrine; (b) Thanon Yaowarat; (c) Sampheng market.

52

Europised Charoen Krung: (a) the Siam Commercial Bank; (b) Holy Rosary Church; and (c) the East Asiatic Co. with, beyond, the neo-Classical styled State Tower (for Chapter 5).

56

The junk wihan of Wat Yannawa: Religion is joined by a monument to Rama III (King) and ancient cannons (Nation). Nation-King-Religion commemorate the goodness of (Chinese) trade.

57

The northern extension of the khlong system (based on data in Piyanart, 1982). This depiction of the khlong is far from complete as many are omitted. Its purpose here is to contrast the intricate labyrinth of earlier regimes with the purposive, industialised (northern) pattern of the Rama V era.

60

Ratchadamnoen Nok and the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall: Rama V’s emulation of Paris, Berlin …

61

The Bangkok tramways system: (1) Bangkholaem line; (2) City Circle line; (3) Samsen line; (4) Dusit line; (5) Hualamphong line; (6) Silom line; (7) Yotse line. The three spur lines are also indicated.

64

Monuments of Ratchadamnoen: (a) Democracy Monument to celebrate the Phibun dictatorship; (b) 14 October 73 Memorial to legitimise the suppression of 1973 and, by implication, that of 1976.

68

xii

List of Illustrations

Figure 2.9

Figure 2.10 Figure 2.11

Figure 2.12

Thanon Songwat and other commemorations: (a) graveyard of ancient technologies; and (b) of discarded spirituality.

70

Three sites of khlong-based communities in the Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn study.

73

Bangkok space: (a) flower market on Thanon Mahathat and (b) Siam Square; then its antithesis in Westernised “order”: (c) Thanon Phetchaburi and (d) Sukhumvit Soi 22.

81

The return of disorder: appropriation of near-home community space, Khlong Bang Bua community after the Baan Man Kong renewal.

82

Rama I, Phloenchit and lower Sukhumvit in context.

93

Rama I, Ploenchit and lower Sukhumvit: BTS, MRT, shopping land and “entertainment” zones. (1) MBK Centre; (2) Siam Discovery Centre; (3) Siam Centre; (4) Paragon; (5) Central World Plaza; (6) Gaysorn Plaza; (7) Amarin Plaza; (8) Phloenchit Centre; (9) Nana Square; (10) Times Square; (11) Robinson department store; and (12) Emporium. Significant areas of bars and entertainment venues are noted.

95

Central World Plaza. Shopping malls and their forecourts increasingly assume the role of community focus previously held by the larn wat (temple grounds). In the April–May 2010 uprising, the plaza became the red-shirt theatre, with the stage in the immediate foreground facing north — in Thailand, protest and uprising take the form of theatre.

97

Sukhumvit as muddle: (a) street market (b) signscape on Soi 11.

109

Chapter 3 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2

Figure 3.3

Figure 3.4

List of Illustrations

Figure 3.5

Figure 3.6

xiii

Screens of The Nation: (a) flags and bunting, of both The Nation and The King, on the walls of the Government House complex, locale of protest and uprising; (b) election time on Sukhumvit and the illusion of democracy.

111

The royal screen: ubiquitous (though intermittently displayed) images of King and Queen veil commerce, government and military; they merge ambiguously with the simultaneously overlaying surface of the spiritual: (a and b) Thanon Phra Sumen, Bowon Niwet; (c) Khlong Toei slums; and (d) Ratchadapisek “entertainment” zone.

112

Figure 3.7

Brahman-Buddhist shrines of Phloenchit-Sikhumvit: (a) the Erawan Shrine; (b) shrine adjoining Amarin Plaza; (c and d) at Central World Plaza. 115

Figure 3.8

Screens of the spiritual: (a) at Chuvit Garden; (b) modernist expression at Sukhumvit Soi 6; (c) and (d) at Poseidon and Emmanuelle (brothels).

116

Figure 3.9

Sukhumvit street market: the calm of Soi 4.

117

Figure 3.10

Undifferentiated space migrates from the indigenous to the commercial: this example is not Sukhumvit but the backpacker realm of Thanon Khaosan (Rattanakosin, between the first and second moats).

118

The transformations of Central World Plaza: (a) 6 February 2010; (b) 21 May 2010; (c) 1 September 2010. The screens of happiness of September 2010 mask the conflagration of 19 May and its destruction. The screens proclaim “Love”, “Loving Thailand”, “Prosperity to Thailand: One Country, One Family and One People”, “Everything will be OK”, “Hope”, “No Love, No Hope, No Future”, “Dance Together”, “Together We Can”, “We Miss You Zen”. Source of image (b): Sidh Sintusingha.

124

Figure 3.11

xiv

List of Illustrations

Chapter 4 Figure 4.1

The fixed rail transit system in 2010.

131

Figure 4.2

Prediction or fantasy: the proposed future state of the fixed rail transit system. Redrawn by the author from Bangkok Master Plan (future Bangkok mass transit map) of Chatchawal Phansopa as updated January 2005, at [accessed 6 March 2010].

132

The 1999 Plan: centre, sub-centres and a highway network.

134

Figure 4.4

The Latphrao-Ramintra “super-block”.

136

Figure 4.5

Ribbon development on Thanon Phahonyothin.

137

Figure 4.6

(a and b) Soi Cowboy; (c and d) Ratchadapisek.

145

Figure 4.7

Las Vegas homage to Bangkok: the BrahmanBuddhist shrine at Caesars Palace to reflect the Bangkok Erawan Shrine. Alternatively, the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel may be seen to reflect Caesars Palace.

146

Ratchadapisek phoenix: (a) terrifying, threatening monster — gaping mouth, beady eyes, protruding horns (1997 ruin) — becomes (b) benign Cyber World Tower (2008 re-imaging).

149

Deciduous Bangkok: Sathorn Unique (1990s– infinity?, architect Rangsan Torsuwan) and the foregrounding screen of religion (Wat Yannawa, locale of the junk wihan, from Chapter 2).

150

Other ruins: (a) SV Garden, Thanon Rama III, from 1997; (b) Thanon Pahonyothin towers, also from 1997; (c) new ruins from 2008, Sukhumvit Soi 13 seen from Chuvit Garden.

151

Hopewell ruins. This especially fine stand is along the Rangsit-Vipavadi highway, opposite the entrance to Kasetsart University.

152

Figure 4.3

Figure 4.8

Figure 4.9

Figure 4.10

Figure 4.11

List of Illustrations

Figure 4.12

Figure 4.13

xv

Phases of the Khlong Toei slums: (a) under the Port-Bangna Expressway; (b) Thanon Kheha Phatthana; (c) neo-Classical styled slum on Kheha Phatthana; (d) along the railway tracks; (e) khlongside from Thanon Kasem Rat; (f ) flats reverting to informality.

154

Waterfront settlements: (a) unseen Khlong Bang Bua; (b) highly exposed: the underside of elitist Dusit.

161

Victory Monument and the grand sweep of the BTS Skytrain.

180

Representations of Parliament: (a) modernist, internationalist, behind the royal screen of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (1970–1974); (b) traditionalist claim, in the winning competition entry (2009, Arsomslip).

185

The great White Elephant of Thanon Phahonyothin: the Chang Building.

188

Ruin by design: MahaNakhom project (architect Ole Scheeren, of OMA).

189

Bangkok River Park Condominium (1991, architect Rangsan Torsuwan).

190

Rangsan Torsuwan: (a) Amarin Plaza, Thanon Phloenchit (1985); (b) Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel (c.1990) with the Erawan Shrine.

191

Rangsan Torsuwan: (a) State Tower; (b) Sathorn Unique.

192

Chapter 5 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2

Figure 5.3 Figure 5.4 Figure 5.5 Figure 5.6

Figure 5.7

Acknowledgments I first visited Bangkok some 40 years ago. I recall it from that time as a green city, mostly two- and three-storeys, a skyline of trees, villas, small wooden houses and shophouses interrupted by the glory of gold and white prang — the temple spires — and a soft, civilised, unhurried place. The orange-robed monks were ubiquitous; so were American servicemen, as it was the era of the Vietnam War. I was vaguely aware of an ongoing communist insurrection in the countryside but the city was finely managed and presented. It was in every sense a good advertisement for the merits of military dictatorship. I did not visit again until 1996: the highway in from the airport presented a harsh city of grey-white concrete blocks, grey haze and a nightmare of gridlocked traffic. It took awhile to discover that the wonderfully complex, chaotic, magical city of older times was still there, underneath the environmental violence of rampant, unregulated “development”. I have now visited Bangkok more than 50 times; its beguiling complexity increasingly intrigues, as does the richness, the vigour of its life in the face of chaos and the mysteries that always seem to lie beneath its surfaces. This is unquestionably one of the great cities of the world. To understand these “mysteries beneath the surface” has provided the motivation for my continuing investigation of the city and for the writing of this book. I thank the city itself and all the people I have confronted over these times — in the streets, pubs, bars, universities, architectural offices; the policemen who have tackled me when I have ventured too close to the King’s motorcade and then befriended me; the yellow-shirt and red-shirt protesters whose rallies and uprisings I have ventured into; my Thai students; my French colleagues who have also tackled the incomprehensibility of Bangkok, but from another worldview; innumerable chance acquaintances. Some quite specific debts must be acknowledged. I have had numerous conversations over the years with M.R. Pumin Varavarn, Sumet Jumsai na Ayutthaya, Cuttaleeya Jiraprasertkun (Noparatnaraporn), Sidh Sintusingha, Eggarin Anukulyudhathon, Pasinee Sunakorn, Kasama xvii

xviii

Acknowledgments

Polikit (Bootsita), Wandee Pinijvarasin, Sompong Amnuay-ngerntra, Nana Srithammasak, Boonanan Natakun, Sirima na Songkhla, Claire Parin, Kim Dovey, David O’Brien, and Darko Radovic. Their ideas and those of many of my other colleagues have inevitably migrated into the present text. As the book’s text has evolved, it has gained immeasurably from the feedback and input from a variety of readers. Two anonymous reviewers provided input of inestimable value. Drafts of the text have also been read by M.R. Pumin Varavan, Sid Sintusingha and Kim Dovey. While all these readings have given me angst (my wonderful ideas and stylistic wizardry challenged), the benefit has been immense. I could never adequately express my appreciation and my admiration for the effort that they have bestowed on the work. I am immensely honoured by the attention. The remaining errors and weaknesses, however, are entirely my own achievement. The photographs and maps are my own except where otherwise acknowledged.

Prologue Masking the City

The provinces elect the government and Bangkok brings it down.1

At about . am on Wednesday 19 May 2010, after several hours of early morning fighting, Royal Thai Army tanks and armoured personnel carriers crashed through barricades that had closed down the commercial heart of Bangkok for more than six weeks. They initially advanced into the Silom and Sala Daeng area, Bangkok’s “Wall Street”. The redshirted protesters and their black-shirted paramilitaries were defeated; by 4 pm most of their leaders had surrendered and their numbers were swept from the city but not before, in retaliation, they set fire to the city centre. The Central World shopping mall, the second largest in Asia and Bangkok’s largest building, burnt for eight hours before it collapsed. Some 33 other buildings were torched, including the Thailand Stock Exchange, Siam Square Cinema, Channel 3 News, Khlong Toei electricity building, and more than ten branches of the Bangkok Bank. At Udon Thani and Khoen Kaen, in the red-shirts’ heartland of northeast Thailand, two town halls were set on fire. At 4.10pm, a curfew was announced. Red-shirts fled, some to the Police Hospital on Rama I road, within the area that they had held during the uprising, others to the royallylinked Wat Pathumwanaram where a military counter-attack left six dead.2 At the barricades, scores were killed. Arson and looting spread through the inner city. Bangkok had seen previous uprisings and massacres in 1973, 1976 and 1992. These, however, had been mostly student-led, as one elite and essentially urban fraction challenged another and its military backers. 2010 was different: there had already been an insurrection in 2008 by the urban middle class and a quiescently approving military, to depose a popularly elected, provincially supported government; now it was the rural poor and other marginalised groups invading the domain of a xix

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resented bourgeoisie. Where previous rifts were commonly between an urban middle class and the military, now it was in large measure between social classes — the provincial majority versus an urban hegemony. The very idea of the Nation was now at risk. Like revolutions elsewhere and in different eras, the rift was colour coded. Significantly, it played out in urban space.

Antecedents The story prefacing these events of 2008, 2009 and 2010 and the fundamental rifts they reveal need to be traced back to Siam of the late 18th century. Upon the establishment of the Bangkok kingdom in 1782, King Yotfa (Rama I, r.1782–1809) undertook a massive military expansion and suppression of peripheral and vassal states to the south, north and northeast. Subsequent reigns consolidated these acquisitions. By the late 1820s, Bangkok was progressively deposing local rulers, installing Thai governors, as the vassal and tributary states became, in effect, colonies. There was always, however, a “reverse” colonisation complicating the process: the Thai did not so much settle the appropriated states as siphon off their populations to Bangkok for constructing defences, building palaces or digging canals, whereupon the removed populations would be permitted to settle on the city’s outskirts — the periphery, in effect, colonising the centre. Then, in the reign of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r.1868–1910), the northeast kingdom of Chiang Mai was colonised; additionally, government was progressively modernised and centralised, while there were concerted efforts, never completely successful, to impose a Siamese (Thai) identity that would suppress those of the old annexed states. The Thai nationalist hegemony over the old states was finally proclaimed in 1939, with the name of the country being changed from the geographical “Siam” to the ethnically signified “Thailand” — “controversial because of the ethnic chauvinism it reflected and fostered” (Reynolds, 2006: 245).3 Thaksin Shinawatra (1950–) was born in Bangkok’s former colony of Chiang Mai, into a leading Chinese business family. His first career was in the Royal Thai Police; his second was in winning government concessions in telecommunications and subsequently in media from whence he emerged with an estimated net worth of some 60 billion baht by the mid-1990s; his third was in politics representing Chiang Mai. In 1998, he formed the Thai Rak Thai (“Thais Love Thais”) Party. In 2001, Thaksin secured electoral victory to become Prime Minister; in 2005, his

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government was re-elected and Thaksin became the first elected leader in Thai history to have completed a parliamentary term and, additionally, to be re-elected (Pasuk and Baker, 2000, 2004a). In 2006, he was ousted in a military coup. The paradox of Thaksin is that his power derived from a capitalist “middle-class” strategy (media control, identification with the old elites) yet his electoral success was based in a populist programme and politics. The implication of his programme was that national wealth would be dispersed — via the taxes of the income-earning classes — to the peasantry (Pasuk and Baker, 2004a, 2004b). The middle-class fractions would assuredly resist, especially as the beneficiaries were perceived to be overwhelmingly in Thaksin’s support base of the ex-colonial north and northeast. The opposition to Thaksin was spearheaded by a rival media magnate, Sondhi Limthongkul, once a Thaksin ally, and based on allegations of vote buying, rivalling the royal power, lèse majesté, sacrilege, selling domestic assets to international investors, and corruption in misuse of office. It was played out initially in the media but subsequently also in the parks, plazas and streets of Bangkok, beginning in 2004 and continuing, with increasing vehemence, through 2005 and 2006. By September 2006, the Sondhi-led mass movement of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), mostly petit bourgeois based, could portray the city as virtually ungovernable. On 19 September, a military coup overthrew the Thaksin government. There were new elections in December 2007; however, the Thaksin forces again triumphed, albeit without the already fugitive Thaksin and under the name of People’s Power Party. Samak Sundaravej, Thaksin’s nominee, became Prime Minister, only to be ousted on 8 September 2008 by a Constitutional Court ruling (for hosting TV cooking classes), to be succeeded by Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin’s brother-in-law, until once again the Constitutional Court acted in December 2008.

Red-Shirts, Yellow-Shirts On Tuesday 26 August 2008, a crowd of some 30,000 yellow-shirt protesters occupied Thanon Ratchadamnoen, Bangkok’s avenue of royal pageantry and site of many earlier protests. Contingents fanned out variously to picket or invade seven state agencies — the Finance Ministry, Public Relations Department, Transport and Agriculture Ministries, a “government mouthpiece” television station and, most significantly,

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Government House, the official office of the Prime Minister.4 Protesters held Government House for 98 days, barring government access to it, setting up a stage for a new form of pageantry — music, rallies, celebrations, and anti-government rhetoric from successions of dignitaries. In Thailand, protests and uprisings take the form of theatre. The impact was to end effective governance of the country.5 Government House is a curious building in the context of Thailand: it is in a Gothic Revival style in some contrast with the more royally-preferred neo-Classical and it is located on Thanon Nakhon Pathom, in effect a side street off the royal Ratchadamnoen — behind the royal screen, as it were, just as the Parliament is similarly screened behind the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (Koompong, 2008). In Thailand, the institutions of democracy are often thus relegated to a second position. The invaders identified in the main with the PAD. Their identity was overwhelmingly urban middle class; women tended to outnumber men and all wore yellow shirts, the symbolic colour for the King and the mandated dress for his birthday; all protest was under banners of his portrait and avowedly in his name, while the explicit intention was to bring down a government that they saw as anti-royalist, covertly republican and a surrogate for fugitive (and provincially supported) ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The tactic was to render the country ungovernable and hence provoke a coup d’état (there had been 19 coups and attempted coups since the end of absolutist monarchy in 1932). The army, however, did not act.6 Then, at dawn on 7 October, the police attacked protesters who had erected barricades around Parliament House, firing tear-gas canisters into the crowd. Two were killed and 443 injured but the police were defeated.7 Some days later, Her Majesty Queen Sirikit attended the cremation of a young woman killed by one of the exploding tear-gas canisters. No greater rebuke of the Royal Thai Police could be imagined. So, what was at stake? For some those didn’t know, in many parts of Siam pictures of queen of Siam … have been taken down from their walls … OH MY BUDDHA never thought I live to see these days.8

The protest continued. On 20 November, a bomb blast in the Government House precinct killed a protester and injured another 22. On the night of 25 November, protesters moved on the Suvarnabhumi international airport, occupying it for eight days and closing all traffic. When a further contingent captured the older Don Muang domestic

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airport, the effect was a virtual isolation of the country, the marooning of some 350,000 travellers, a closing of the tourism industry and an almost total economic shutdown. The appearance of a resolution came on 2 December: a nine-judge bench of the Constitutional Court ruled that the government was illegal due to a (not-unusual) vote-buying scandal in the north and northeast of the country in the previous elections. The airport sieges were lifted, Government House was abandoned and in a Parliamentary vote on 15 December 2008, after some coerced defections from the previous, elected government, Abhisit Vejjajiwa from the opposition Democrat Party was appointed Prime Minister.9 It was now time for the next move. Disparate supporters of the previous elected government, distinguishing themselves with red shirts and identifying themselves as the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), had long shadowed the yellow-shirts. Seeing their government ousted via a “judicial coup”, they moved to the streets recently vacated by the urban and royalist yellow-shirts and called to the countryside to swell the numbers to defend democracy. There were rallies of increasing frequency, size and vehemence, typically addressed via video-link or mobile phone by the fugitive Thaksin, proclaiming that only he could resolve the rift between city and countryside, between yellow and red. At a rally of the red-shirted UDD on 29 December 2008, the stage was adorned, as on all such occasions, with portraits of the King and Queen but also with the banner “Privileged Thieves”.10 The UDD were blocked by the police from emulating the PAD and occupying Government House. To capture the airports also now seemed tactically impossible. So, if the economy could not be closed down, the city would suffice: in late March 2009, the UDD, massively reinforced by red-shirts from the provinces, converged on the Victory Monument. This is an obelisk-like structure with sculptured military figures in the centre of a vast rond point at the intersection of major roads, celebrating an event of questionable glory in the Second World War. Its occupation thus had the symbolic effect of tweaking the military nose; the more practical effect was to disrupt city traffic. When, over the following days, the protesters closed other strategic intersections on the city’s road system, the consequence was a virtually citywide paralysis at the hands of what could be seen as a mostly provincial (rural, small town) mob. In Thailand, Songkran is one of the most important festivals, symbol-laden and a time of mass celebration. An ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summit, to be hosted by Thailand but postponed from December due to the turmoil of that time, had been

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scheduled for Songkran 2009 at the Pattaya resort on the eastern seaboard. The Southeast and East Asian leaders assembled and so did the red-shirt protesters. On 11 April, the latter invaded the summit venue, the leaders of China, Japan and Korea fled, needing to be evacuated by helicopter from the hotel roof, and Prime Minister Abhisit had no option but to abandon the ASEAN summit. Songkran marked a break point. The destruction of the ASEAN summit had crushingly damaged Thai prestige — whereas the Victory Monument occupation had attacked the imagining of the military (as defender of the Nation), the ASEAN destruction was against the Nation in the highest sense. Thus, the UDD red-shirts had affronted, variously, both Nation and King. Songkran was also a break point for the UDD and its supporters. Thaksin was increasingly seen by many to have gone too far, a rabble-rouser, seeking only revenge, no longer electable, a spent force. The red-shirts increasingly metamorphosed from Thaksin defenders to a movement for social democracy.11

May 2010 A red-shirt counter-attack after their Songkran debacle was mooted throughout late 2009 and early 2010. On the weekend of 20 March 2010, a massive convoy of trucks, motorcycles, even go-carts seeped through the streets of Bangkok from the countryside. The venue of protest was the traditional locale of protest and massacre of Thanon Ratchdamnoen and the emblematic Democracy Monument that celebrates the 1930s–1950s Phibun Songkhram dictatorship. With hundreds of thousands of protesters, the focus of action was on the Phanfa and Makkhawan Rangsan bridges. On 10 April, there was a botched military crackdown to clear the site. This left some 20 dead and 850 injured, according to BBC reports allegedly sympathetic to the protesters. Its main effect, however, was to cause the body of the protest to move some four-and-a-half kilometres east, from Ratchadamnoen to the Ratchaprasong intersection — it is the intersection of Thanon Rama I-Ploenchit (part of the great west-to-east Sukhumvit corridor, the armature on which the city of the 20th century had spread) and the north-south Thanon Ratchadamri, avenue of commercial grandeur. Here were Central World Plaza, Thailand’s largest shopping mall, the Erawan shrine, arguably the city’s most popularly revered, both US and British embassies on nearby Thanon Witthayu (Wireless Road), grand hotels and focus of tourist spending. Already on 8 April, with the immense

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protest spilling into the Ratchaprasong intersection, the following department stores and malls had declared themselves closed: Central World, Zen, Big C Ratchadamri Superstore, Gaysorn Plaza, Amarin Plaza, Siam Centre and Siam Discovery, Siam Paragon. The protesters, increasingly militant, consolidated their position in a three-square-kilometre area of the city’s commercial centre. Ultimata were thrown around by both red-shirt leaderships — deeply factionalised — and the Abhisit government; the military, it seemed, remained ambivalent, undecided, yet increasingly under pressure to act to resolve a deadlock that had paralysed both polity and economy. By Thursday 13 May, the “noose tightened”: the army had effectively sealed the protesters in a box defined by Thanon Petchaburi, Phyathai, Rama IV and Wireless — the heart of the commercial-diplomatic city. The skytrain system was sabotaged, the revered Chulalongkorn Hospital was invaded by black-shirt commandos, the gunfire became increasingly tactical and the commandant of the black-shirted militant wing of the red-shirts was killed, allegedly by sniper fire. Then, on the morning of Wednesday 19 May came the denouement whose description opened this Prologue. The destruction of 19 May was not mere fury; rather, it conveyed a diversity of intended meanings. Targeted media outlets were those perceived to be pro-yellow-shirt or otherwise rivals of Thaksin’s own media empire; the especially targeted Bangkok Bank was identified with its chairman, General Prem Tinsulanonda who was also chair of the King’s Privy Council and his chief adviser and, latterly, the arch enemy of Thaksin. The motivation for destroying Central World Plaza may have related to little more than its centrality.

Dilemmas The yellow-red rift and street battles of 2008, 2009 and 2010 threw a number of dilemmas into painful relief. First, there is that underlying divide. It might superficially be seen as between Bangkok and the provinces — between Bangkok and its erstwhile colonies, never reconciled, even linguistically divided. The northeastern Isaan plateau, for example, remains mostly Lao-speaking; then there is the North and its hill-tribe minorities. There is also the far more violent divide between Bangkok and the Malay-Muslim southern provinces whose resistance to the centre is separate from the colour-coded division of the city (McCargo, 2009). Yet this is indeed a simplistic understanding of the rift: the poor of the

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city’s streets — the beggars, street sweepers, prostitutes, labourers on construction sites — are mostly migrants from the ex-colonies. Though the red-shirts who invaded the streets in 2009 included great numbers transported in from the provinces, it seems that most were already denizens of Bangkok; by 2010, the north and northeast were now more clearly committed and mobilised. The Muslim south, in turn, finds itself confronting a city that is already significantly Islamic. The colonised, in turn, colonise the centre. Second, all of the events alluded to above have occurred in the spaces of the city. Protest in the 20th century had been mostly confined to the Royal Way of Ratchadamnoen although, in 1976, it had significantly spilled into the Royal Field of Sanam Luang. From 2006, however, dissent migrated into spaces of the wider city and thence, in 2008 and 2009, to the flows of traffic and commerce. Then, in April and May 2010, the heart of the commercial city became not so much a site of protest as of the symbolic destruction of a previous order of society. Because there were multiple, conflicting agendas in play and a multiplicity of backgrounds, those invaded spaces come to mean different things to different actors in the drama of the city. Complex and contradictory meanings are constructed. Older meanings become overlain with new ones: Government House becomes a symbol of government overthrow, the Victory Monument can now signify the impotence of the state, Suvarnabhumi airport can remind variously of global connectivity, vulnerability or people power, the Ratchaprasong district can now signify the fundamental social divide. The presence of refugees from Isaan or the hill tribes of the north, once a comforting reassurance of elite dominance, now suggests the streets as places of alienation and the periphery as threat. Third, both the PAD and the UDD rallied in the name of the King and under banners of his portrait. The uprising in the south, by contrast, pretends no such loyalty. Royal portraits and commemorative shrines blanket the city, in the streets and other public places, on buildings and in semi-private interiors; they are far less in evidence in the countryside. They can be both motivation and comfort. Yet the Thaksin rhetoric, whether intentionally or otherwise, unlocked the spectre of a republic; the monarchical system itself seemed to come into doubt, with even the reverential domestic press raising the prospect of republicanism. More destabilising, the domestic press began to make references to analyses in the international media that questioned the King’s role in the turmoil and political immaturity of Thailand.12

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Fourth, the question arose regarding the nature of a Thai modernity — is the idea of liberal democracy merely the latest Western import? Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the turmoil is that many in the People’s Alliance for Democracy were demanding an end to a (Western-style) democracy that would always deliver government to the representatives of the provinces and the rural poor — provinces, moreover, that are still seen in part from a colonising eye. There were even calls for a “new” democracy, with no more than 30 per cent of the parliament elected and the remaining 70 per cent appointed, presumably by an allcaring, all-enlightened King.

Nation, King, Religion The official imagining of a Thai nation is built around a triad of Nation, King, (Buddhist) Religion, an ideology initially constructed in the absolutist, nationalist era of King Vajiravudh (Rama VI, r.1910– 1925) and subsequently reinvented in the military dictatorship of the Phibun Songkhram and Sarit eras (1948–1957, 1958–1963). Each of these foundational components has its multiple, many-layered representations in the built environment of the city and, in turn, the intersections of those representations express the interdependence of the components themselves. The Nation finds expression in the Monuments (Democracy, Victory), the ubiquitous national flags, the constant presence of military and police. The King might be represented in the palaces, the naming of bridges and roads, the Royal Field of Sanam Luang and the Royal Way of Thanom Ratchadamnoen; however, his most powerful and universal presence is in the portraits and shrines that bestrew both urban and private space. The Religion, too, is present at many levels: in the wat (temples), the street shrines and the ever-present spirit houses for the spirits of place and the ancestors, also the amulet markets, garlanded trees and the symbols that merge both the royal and the spiritual. The foundational edifice is undergoing assault. The story told above has shaken the Nation, although that erosion has been proceeding for some time. There has been the long and frequently violent rift between democratic and military imaginings of the Nation since the ending of royal absolutism in 1932. The key effect of the Thaksin era has been an awakening of what can be seen variously as a peasant, worker or underprivileged class consciousness and irreversible political awareness.

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This, in turn, has provoked a heightened middle-class political consciousness. The democracy movement that flourished at various moments — 1973, 1976, 1992 — before being firmly crushed by the military was always led by the middle class. From 2006, the democratic imagining of the Nation had splintered as the red-shirts came to realise the power of the popular vote and the yellow-shirts realised that democracy brings an end to the hegemony of the Bangkok elite. The sundering of the Nation has inevitably produced a new ambiguity underlying the place of the King in the foundational triad. One side of the violent divide dons the King’s yellow, the other the colour of revolution. The emblems of Religion continue to blanket urban space and, at least in official representations, to merge with the emblems and ceremonies of royalty. Yet the pacifist precepts of Buddhism fail to modulate the violence.

The Space of the City The erosion of the legitimating and motivating unity of Nation, King and Religion in the Thai imagining of the world — both official and popular — is one of four themes that will run through the present account of the city and of how it is to be read. The second is the Thai love of surface appearances, screens that can afford order to a chaotic, capricious, untrustworthy world; most specifically, Nation, King and Religion translate into surfaces, screens, comforting masks across that chaotic, unpredictable world. The story following will trace the political construction of this space of surfaces and, in turn, its erosion, as the space of the present age — cyberspace, the space of the Internet and of the ubiquitousness of communication — penetrates the once-protecting veils. Third is the absence of boundaries between different realms of existence, different legitimating screens and different spaces and understandings of space, which yield both a muddled physical environment, a realm of chaos, hybridity and ambiguity, and a lack of clear conceptual definitions. In Thailand, we face a logic that permits contradiction — things can be sacred and profane, benign and malign. The final theme involves the levels of external intrusion, into the nation as such and into the society and culture more deeply. It is this last theme that will be used to lend some organising structure to the account. So Chapter 1 will address an earlier age when Siam, while facing only the most vaguely sensed threat of colonial intrusion, was itself the regional superpower and coloniser. The emblematic spaces of that era are its two capitals, Thonburi and Rattanakosin, as well as

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Thanon Ratchadamnoen, the “royal way” of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) and mask of modernity over a strengthened realm of tradition and hierarchy. On these are to be read the scars of old Siam’s aggression. They are scars that additionally leave their traces in the present society more broadly and in its spatial contestations — not least in the present, seemingly irreconcilable divisions. Chapter 2 turns to the semicolonisation of Siam through trade — states whose reach was already transnational, infiltrating an insular though imperialist Siam. Here, the emblematic space is Bangkok’s Thanon Charoen Krung, locale of early global trade and European settlement. In Charoen Krung, we find the genesis of modern, corporatist Bangkok — the conglomerates and the corporate towers of the later Thanon Silom. The next level of Western intrusion is at the level of consumption with the global tourist, in its diverse mass, constituting the colonising horde; this is the topic of Chapter 3. In the present city, its effects are most clearly read in Thanon Sukhumvit and the myriad, labyrinthine soi (laneways) that run off it. Chapter 4 is concerned with modernisation as the intrusion of (mostly Western) ideas and the colonisation of the culture itself. While Thanon Ratchadapisek, a pale reflection of the Las Vegas “Strip”, might represent this erosion most blatantly, its effects are to be observed throughout the city. The ruins of economic collapse and the endemic slums are equally its manifestation. Finally, in Chapter 5, attention turns to what might be called epistemic colonisation — the intrusion of other ways of seeing reality and constructing knowledge. Cyberspace may be its emblematic space although it is in the universities that the conflicts and inconsistencies between different worldviews are especially revealed. It is in this realm of discourse that the PAD’s search for an elitist “democracy” is to be visited. To this sequence of the forms of colonisation of Bangkok, there will be an Epilogue, in the form of a reflection on a failure to reflect. Although the legitimating, motivating screens may in some senses be fracturing, there seems to be a paralysis that inhibits reflection on the reality — or its lack — that might have lain behind those comforting screens. A critical meditation on the spaces of the city, the vitality and creativity as well as the venality and destruction, can offer a pathway to that metamorphic reflection.

A Note on Method Each of the five chapters will be broken into two parts: the making of the city; and making sense of the city. Stated otherwise, the first part of

Emblematic spaces: Thonburi, Rattanakosin and Thanon Ratchadamnoen (Chapter 1), Thanon Charoen Krung (Chapter 2), the Sukhumvit corridor (Rama I, Phloenchit, Sukhumvit) (Chapter 3), Ratchadapisek and the Khlong Toei slums (Chapter 4). (The themes of Chapter 5 are more ubiquitous.)

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each will look at the social production of the city, in a sense at its history (although the focus is always on the experience of the present city); it is here that the ambiguities and contradictions of the (semi-)colonisation of Siam/Thailand will play out. Then, the second part will be even more on the present: how are we to read the spaces and places of the city in the context of that social production? Sources are eclectic, based on extensive fieldwork in the Bangkok region over some 15 years (and, more tenuously, on my memories of the city during visits there in the 1960s and 1970s), the experience of supervising some 18 Thai PhD students in the past decade, material gleaned from having organised a number of conferences on Thai studies in that same period, and also interviews and numerous conversations with Thai academics, students, architects, developers and participants in many of the political events that constitute a foreground to the spaces described here and to the meanings to be read from them. Two possibilities of bias must be acknowledged. The first is in these sources listed above. The barrier of language has tended to isolate me from the rural poor, the denizens of the slums, the beggars and the poorest monks. While red-shirt protesters were accessible to me, they were mostly those whose commitment was ideological — the radical middle class — rather than the poor farmers, wage labourers and the chronically underemployed. While I have travelled extensively in both the Isaan plateau and the North, their languages are inaccessible to me. The second bias is more difficult to correct. I am a farang (foreigner), bringing a different worldview to a universe that is, ultimately, forever inaccessible to me. In one sense, this becomes explicit as a theme of Chapter 5. It also, however, runs through all the chapters: this book is itself, inevitably, part of the complex of colonisation of which it writes.

Landscapes of Illusion and the First Level of Colonisation

1

Chapter 1

Landscapes of Illusion and the First Level of Colonisation Thonburi-Kudijeen, Rattanakosin, Ratchadamnoen

There are difficulties in understanding — reading — Bangkok. It is, at least to the Western eye, a city of chaos, a landscape of incoherent collisions and blurring overlays. It is a city of sharp contrasts, collisions and inconsistencies (juxtapositions), also a space of screens, overlays and surfaces (superimpositions). There is constant ambiguity, in the screens seemingly masking some hidden reality but also in naming. Names do not seem to “work” in Thailand in the same way as in Western societies. These confusions of reading arise in a milieu of ambivalence towards the past — that is, in the difficulties of a Thai historiography. They also arise in the way that Thai people appear to construct their world — in a Thai worldview and epistemology or way of constructing knowledge. A key to these enigmas, I will be arguing, lies in part in the processes whereby, over past centuries, the Thai people of the Siam central plain colonised their own periphery which now colonises them and, in part, in the foundational myths that have had to be constructed around those events. The first level of colonisation is internal and the foundational myths are integral with it. Bangkok colonised Siam and its tributary states which now, in turn, invade (colonise) Bangkok. The imagery of the city’s entry is one legacy;1 an ongoing Muslim insurrection in the southern provinces and the hordes of economic refugees from the depressed but increasingly politicised north and northeast, and ultimately the colourcoded rift of the 2000s, are others. Yet a third legacy, I will argue, is the world of surfaces, screens and masks that are so distinctive to Bangkok space.

1

2

Reading Bangkok

1. Internal Colonisation and the Foundation of the City Waterscape Bangkok was a fishing village and small trading port on the west bank of the Maenam Chao Phraya (river) near its mouth to the sea, from before the era of Ayutthaya (c.1351–1767). Its name would seem to have come from bang, meaning a riverbank village, and kok or makok, a wild olive or bitter plum. In the era of King Mahachakraphat (r.1548–1568), the seafront town on the west bank became known as Thonburi Sri Mahasamut although Westerners travelling through the area still used the earlier name of Bangkok or Bancok. Early in the Ayutthaya period, the Chao Phraya river followed a meandering course, approximating to what is now the line of Khlongs Bangkok Noi and Bangkok Yai, and which seriously hindered the city’s access for trade; accordingly, a series of canals were dug as shortcuts. The first, initiated by King Chaiyarajadhira (Chairacha, r.1533–1546), went from the present southern entrance to Khlong Bangkok Noi (at the present Bangkok Noi Railway Station) to the entrance to Khlong Bangkok Yai (at Wat Arun). The second change, by King Chakkraphat (r.1549–1568), was between inner Khlong Bangkok Noi and Khlong Bang Kruay. The third, by King Prasat Thong (Sampet V, r.1629–1656), yielded a shortcut between the present entry to Khlong Bang Kruay and the northern entry to Bangkok Noi thereby, incidentally, removing the utility of the second change. The erosion from river current and floods widened the first and third channels which thereby became the new course of the river. There was one further intervention: King Tai Sa (r.1709–1733) ordered a small canal, Khlong Lad Kret Noi, for transport and military purposes in Nonthaburi. This yielded Koh Kret (Kret Island). These changes had two main effects on the Thonburi area. First, they gave its present geography as defined by the two khlong of Bangkok Noi and Bangkok Yai and by the “new” west bank of the Chao Phraya. Second, by shortening the distance to Ayutthaya, they altered both the volume of trade and the vulnerability to maritime attack. King Narai faced the need for trade control and customs collection, as well as for improved maritime defence. Thonburi in that era was developed to provide both. The Portuguese had been the first European traders with an impact on Ayutthaya. The Dutch came in 1604 and emerged as supporters of the Ayutthaya court in defence variously against the Burmese and

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Figure 1.1 The Maenam Chao Phraya: (a) conjectured course prior to 1534 and its subsequent interventions; (b) the present course.

their own internal opposition — both King Songtham (r.1620–1628) and King Prasat Thong (r.1629–1656) were usurpers and needed such support. King Narai (r.1656–1688) came to the throne through coup d’état and needed non-Dutch support to counter any Dutch-supported opposition and an unreliable nobility. The defence of Thonburi (thereby of Ayutthaya) was accordingly handed to French mercenaries. The formal arrival of the French was in 1662; in 1686, they sent troops to garrison Bangkok, claiming to protect trade and French residences on both sides of the Chao Phraya river at what is now Wichaprasit Fort (Choisy, 1993). Wichaprasit Fort was built in the King Narai period as “Vichayent Fort”, together with a twin fort on the river’s opposite eastern or Phra Nakhon bank (Loubère, 1693). The forts were commanded and modernised by the Chevalier de Forbin in 1686 and 1687 before the French

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Reading Bangkok

were forced to retreat ignominiously in 1688 following the death of Narai and revolution in Ayutthaya (Smithies, 1993: 4; Van Der Cruysse, 2002). In the ensuing uproar, the eastern bank fort was badly damaged (it was of wood and bamboo) and subsequently demolished. Wichaprasit Fort remained the principal defensive barrier to Ayutthaya and also the tariff gate. The area similarly remained a principal port for the transfer of cargoes. Later, in 1771, King Taksin had it renovated and renamed Wichaprasit. Wichaprasit opens the window on a now dimly recalled era of European intrusion, for this was the frontline of Ayutthaya’s defence from maritime invasion

Taksin, Thonburi and the Quest for Legitimacy The Siamese capital of Ayutthaya had been captured and destroyed by the Burmese in April 1767. The extraordinary achievement of Taksin, the governor of Tak, was in reuniting an army, defeating the Burmese and subsequently bringing some measure of unity over a remnant Siam. Although he became King Taksin (r.1768–1782), his ancestry was not of (Ayutthayan) royal blood and he had no legitimate claim to the throne. His decision to abandon Ayutthaya and instead to be crowned king at Thonburi may have been prompted in part by the need to indicate the radical break and a new beginning for a new nation and dynasty (Wood, 1924: 231–50). An important legitimating act for former Siamese kings had been architectural, in the building of many splendid temples and palaces as a sign of the king’s authority and greatness. Social instability and external threats throughout Taksin’s reign, however, precluded the extensive building programme that might have transformed Thonburi into a new symbol of power. Consequently, Thonburi remained a very modest affair in comparison with the still remembered magnificence of Ayutthaya. Royal legitimacy was also traditionally ensured through support for the Buddhist Sangha, the monkhood, as a demonstration of virtue and hence the right to rule. Here, Taksin’s fervour could compensate for the inability to build: in 1768, he sought to determine which members of the Sangha were the most scholarly and to acknowledge them; in 1769, he appointed a respected monk from Nakhon Si Thammarat to be Supreme Patriarch; he ordered the copying of religious texts from both Siam and friendly neighbouring countries, for collection in the capital (Reynolds, 1972: 33–5). A harmonious relationship between ruler and Sangha — or at least the appearance of such harmony — was essential to

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political success. Most significant of all, in 1778, the Emerald Buddha, supreme emblem of kingship and its divine legitimacy, was plundered from Vientiane and translated to Thonburi (Sawang Veeravong, 1992). The story circulated in the next reign was that Taksin’s religious fervour increasingly unhinged his mind; he began to imagine his own divinity and to act irrationally. An alternative view, however, is that his idea of sacred kingship was drawn, indirectly, from Southeast Asian beliefs and Indian conceptions. In late Ayutthaya, these beliefs were modified and the ruler would come to be seen as a Bodhisatta or “Future Buddha” rather than a divinity (Cady, 1964: 37–8). Taksin seems to have believed that, by ascetic practice, he had been able to move himself along that path in this life and to acquire supernational powers. On the basis of this self-belief, he claimed to be spiritually superior to the monkhood. That, however, went against the political theory of the age. Whether this signified insanity, of course, is just a matter of judgement. The insanity story, no doubt, was more convenient to the next reign.

Rama I, Rattanakosin and the Quest for Legitimacy Chao Chakri, King Yotfa, Rama I (r.1782–1809), who overthrew Taksin and presided over his ritual execution, similarly had no royal antecedents and hence also faced the problem of legitimacy. His strategy was somewhat the opposite of Taksin’s, as he sought the appearance of continuity with Ayutthaya rather than the radical break. Although he had an abbreviated investiture ceremony on 13 June 1782, a far more elaborate coronation on the Ayutthaya model was staged three years later (Reynolds, 1972: 37–8). Every effort was made to restore the Ayutthaya traditions — it is significant that one of the appellations given in his 1782 installation ceremony was Rama Tibodi, also bestowed on U Thong, the first king of Ayutthaya (Chula Chakrabingse, 1960: 70–9). The capital was removed to an island linked to the opposite, Phra Nakhon side of the Chao Phraya river. This was in part to strengthen its defences against the constant threat of a further Burmese attack but also to strengthen Rama I’s legitimacy. The new capital would, as far as possible, mirror Ayutthaya to impress on the society the similarity between the two capitals and to indicate a continuity between Rama I and the great kings of the former capital.2 In one action, however, replication of Ayutthaya was not the motivation: the Emerald Buddha was brought from Thonburi to the new capital on which was conferred the title Rattanakosin (“Keeping place of the [Emerald] Buddha”).

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Reading Bangkok

The new settlement’s official name began Krung Thep Phra Maha Nakhon … (“The city of angels, the capital city …”); only the foundational island is now called Rattanakosin; the present broader metropolis will still be referred to as Krung Thep although the name Bangkok, erroneously conferred by foreigners, has subverted the previous and typically Thai ambiguity of naming — the ultimate Western colonisation. Naming was fluid and both people and places received titles rather than names. Siamese kings did not have names. The man known as Rama I was first called Thong Duang; he subsequently became known by a conferred title, Luang Yokbat (governor of ) Ratchaburi; under Taksin, he became Phra Raja Warindra, then was raised to Phraya Abhaya Ronarit, then in 1769 to Phraya Yommaraj, and in 1770 became Chao Phraya Maha Chakri. He eventually became Somdet Chao Phraya Maha Kshatriyaseuk. After the coup against Taksin, he crowned himself king but without a name. After his reign, he was later given the name, Phrabat Somdet Phra Buddha Yotfa Culaloke. In 1916, the name Rama I, or the first reign, was used.3 Indeterminacy is somewhat endemic in Thai thought, as the re-titling of both people and places is used as an expression of power — I am powerful, I can rename. Rama I, like Taksin, also turned to religious reform. Monastic discipline had never fully recovered from the chaos following the fall of Ayutthaya; further, the religious irregularities of the Taksin era had exacerbated the disorder and degeneracy of the Sangha, with serious effects on society more widely. The king initiated reform of the Sangha, benefiting the society but also the appearance of his own virtue and merit and hence strengthening his legitimacy. In 1788, he convened a Council of leading Buddhist monks and scholars at Wat Mahathat with the objective of reforming the Thai version of the Buddhist scriptures which, with the passage of time, had accreted inconsistencies, errors and alien myths. The Council would create the image of his loyalty to the Dhamma, the teaching of the Buddha, and hence yet a further sign of his legitimacy. Action was taken to re-establish control over Ayutthaya’s former vassal states and to extract from their leaders acknowledgement of Rama I’s authority over them. In the early 1770s, during the era of his service to Taksin, he had subjugated Cambodia; in 1774, as Chao Phraya Maha Chakri, with his brother Phraya Surasi, he went north to Lanna to free that kingdom from the Burmese; in 1776, he conquered Khmer Pa Dong (the area of present Surin); in 1778, it was the three Lao kingdoms of Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Champasak that were brought

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under his control. The looting of Vientiane accounted for the capture of the Emerald Buddha together with the also emblematic Phra Bang (Prabang) image (Sawang Veeravong, 1992: 20). It was from a further campaign of expansion into Cambodia that he was recalled, in 1782, to put down rebellion and chaos in Thonburi. This led to the ousting and execution of Taksin and to Chao Phraya Maha Chakri becoming Rama I. His task in the 1780s was the consolidation of Bangkok’s control over this vastly expanded periphery, principally by imposing regents and governors loyal to Siam and by wars to subdue the two other regional powers of Burma and Vietnam. Also in this and the following two reigns, there was a continuing process of strengthening control over the southern sultanates. As these were Islamic vassals of a stridently Buddhist state, and as the Siamese followed the customary practice of seizing and transferring the population of a vanquished state, Bangkok accordingly acquired a substantial Muslim population. While Bangkok expanded militarily and in the colonising of its periphery, there was all the time a more ambivalently internal economic colonisation proceeding. Chinese significantly increased their presence during the Rama I reign, continuing Taksin’s policy of allowing Chinese immigration as a strategy to maintain the economy — economic expansion would have been necessary to pay for the colonial wars which in turn yielded the resources to feed the increasing (Chinese) population. The Chinese were mainly in the trade and mercantile sectors and, in the next reigns, European visitors found Bangkok to be filled with Chinese junks of all sizes (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 32, 288). There was a difference, however, between the Taksin and Rama I approaches to the Chinese, though both kings had Chinese lineage. The Chinese of the Ayutthaya period were mostly Hokkien, from the Fukien province, maritime traders merging into the business enterprises and bloodlines of successive royal dynasties. Taksin, however, was of the minority Chinese Taechiu — junk traders, smugglers, pirates and warriors — and accordingly, encouraged Taechiu immigration and participation in royal-sponsored trade. With Rama I, the Taechiu quickly lost their privileged position though certainly not their dominance in Bangkok’s Chinese population. Then, with the move of the capital to the eastern bank of the Chao Phraya river and its centring on the site of the old Chinese community, the Taechiu were forced to vacate their area and to relocate downstream in the marshy wilderness of Sampheng (Van Roy, 2007: 7–8; 2008: 7). The Hokkien, by contrast, were more tolerated. The topography and tensions of the rival Chinese communities were set in place.

8

Reading Bangkok

Foundational Myths (1): The Mystery of the Emerald Buddha The identity of a nation will always be in part embedded in the foundational myths. In the case of the Siamese, the myth of the Emerald Buddha takes on that role although, yet again, we face ambiguity. The emblematic Emerald Buddha was central to the struggles for legitimacy of both Taksin and Rama I. The myth is linked to that of the “Jewel par excellence”, the gem of the Chakkavatti king which remains in its original place on the mythic Mount Vibula while its power is manifested in the world through the Holy Emerald Jewel.4 It suffices to say that, mythic origins aside, there are accounts of the Holy Emerald Jewel (in its present manifestation, the Emerald Buddha) falling at different times into the hands of princes of Ayutthaya, Kampeng Phet and Chiang Rai. Then, in the late 15th century, it came into the possession of King Tilok of Chiang Mai (r.1441–1487) who brought it to his capital and established its cult there (Sarassawadee, 2005). The fullness and purity of the religion would be ensured by the king. There was an architectural expression of the accomplishment, as the Jewel was kept in close proximity of Chedi Luang, the stupa which was the symbolic centre of the kingdom and in which was encased the sacred (Buddha) relic. Relic and Jewel were seen to embody the same power. In 1545, the son of the king of Luang Prabang acceded to a request to take the throne of Chiang Mai where he ruled for several years. Upon the death of his father, he returned to Luang Prabang, taking the Emerald Buddha with him. To the great distress of the Chiang Mai populace, he refused to return the Jewel, instead establishing it in a temple near his own palace. Subsequently, he moved his capital to Vientiane where it was again established, this time in proximity to That Luang as relic-encasing stupa and centre of the kingdom. The Jewel remained in Vientiane for 200 years, until 1778, when Chao Phraya Maha Chakri who captured the city sent it to Thonburi where it was received with great honour. Thence, when Chakri (Rama I) deposed Taksin and shifted the capital across the river to Rattanakosin island, the Emerald Buddha was transported to its own chapel, the Chapel Royal of Wat Phra Kaeo in the compound of the Grand Palace and not, as in Chiang Mai and Vientiane, in conjunction with the prang that served as centre of the kingdom — in the case of Rattanakosin, that centre would be the Golden Mount at Wat Saket, some distance from the palace (Kosong Srisang, 1973: 216–8). It remains in the Chapel Royal, venerated as protector of the Chakri dynasty and of the kingdom.

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The chronicles of Chiang Mai testify that, while the image was in Chiang Mai, it came to serve as the pre-eminent guardian of the city. It assumed a similar role in Vientiane and Bangkok. There were also immensely potent connections: the Holy Emerald Jewel correlates with celestial power; the almost equally renowned image of the Phra Sihing had explicit connections with the underworld. According to the chronicle recording the origin of the Phra Sihing, it was cast in the image of a Naga king who had assumed the form of a Buddha. In a local Chiang Mai chronicle, immediately after its casting, the Naga king took it with him and descended into his underworld realm (Notton, 1928). Thus, according to the tradition, the Phra Sihing and the Emerald Buddha complement each other and their reuniting in one place, as they are in Bangkok, is most beneficial. On the other hand, there is the antipathy between the Holy Emerald Jewel and the Phra Bang (Prabang) image, the cultic emblem of Luang Prabang, ancient capital and rival of Vientiane. The antipathy accounts for — or is it that it represents? — the rivalry of claims to the Lao soul, a rivalry expressed in present times in the Lao-Isaan, red-shirt invasion of Bangkok.5 When the two images were brought together in Bangkok, it is believed that great havoc was inflicted, leading to the Phra Bang’s return to its previous abode in Luang Prabang.

Foundational Myths (2): The Story of Rama III and Anuvong Wat Phra Keao and the Emerald Buddha take on yet deeper significance from the conflict between King Nangklao (Rama III, r.1824–1851) of Rattanakosin and King Anuvong of Vientiane (r.1805–1828). The 1778–1779 invasion of Vientiane by Generals Chakri and Surasi had not only destroyed the city and pillaged the Emerald Buddha, but also brought Vientiane to the status of little more than a colony of Siam. The Emerald Buddha became a principal obsession of the Lao in the 19th century. The dispossession initiated by Siam against the Lao only served to fuel the renaissance and force of religion in Laos, sparking an awareness of the need for a national resurgence among the Lao. Anuvong restored Vientiane’s Ho Phra Kaeo which the invaders had destroyed in 1779 and which symbolised the abode of the Emerald Buddha. Other Ho Phra Kaeo were constructed in other Lao centres to function as temple, political focus and virtual abode of the Emerald Buddha. These Ho were effective challenges through the medium of architecture launched by the Lao against Bangkok’s domination.

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Figure 1.2 Thonburi and Rattanakosin: the city before the era of the thanon (roads). The future paths of the initiating, emblematic roads (Charoen Krung, Bamruang Muang/Rama I and Ratchadamnoen) and the future form of Sanam Luang are indicated.

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The political consolidation of Lao identity and the restoration of Buddhist ideology were interwoven; further, they were relatively tolerated by Bangkok during the cultural renaissance of the reign of King Loetla Nabhalai (Rama II, r.1809–1824). There was a new wave of Lao confidence and a mobilisation of hearts and minds with a simple goal: to realise the unity of Laos and to recover the independence lost in 1779 (Sila, 1971: 12–3). The religious revival of Laos, coupled with the slogan that Laos was “the holy land where all prodigies are accomplished and where the religious teaching originated” (Garnier, 1871: 277–8), aggravated Rama III’s aggression towards the Lao — while taking no real interest in Buddhism (he was a soldier and trader), Rama III for reasons of realpolitik wanted Siam to be the sole fountain of Buddhist faith. For Rama III, the goal was simple and political: to construct “a strengthening of royal Buddhism to the prejudice of popular Buddhism” (Ling, 1979: 54). The mounting tension between the two monarchies was mirrored in opposed ideas of kingship: proclamations to the outer towns referred to the sacred lineage of the Thai king whereas, in the Lao states, the king’s right to rule was based upon moral authority according to the principles of the Dhamma (Breazeale, 1975: 39).6 In the event, Anuvong’s war of liberation (from a Lao perspective) or insurrection (from a Siamese viewpoint) had begun as early as 1805, with peaks in 1820 and 1821. The war was finally engaged in 1827– 1828; the Lao were defeated, Anuvong and his family betrayed and captured, delivered to Rama III in Bangkok where, in February 1829, they were humiliated, tortured in conditions of some brutality and killed (Bruguière, 1831: 137).7 With the end of the Vientiane monarchy and the installation of Siamese governors in its erstwhile territories, overlordship transformed into effective colonisation. There is a modern postscript on the Emerald Buddha. On 10 April 2005, Thaksin Shinawatra as Prime Minister presided over a meritmaking ceremony at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. As the precoup fury against Thaksin increased in October 2005, so did allegations that he had usurped a royal function by presiding over the ceremony, even occupying the chair usually reserved for the King. Accusations of lèse majesté were added into the list of Thaksin offences. The legitimising power of the Emerald Buddha is only for kings. Thailand’s present contestations can only be understood in the context of Bangkok’s colonisation of its periphery. Thaksin Shinawatra’s strongest support base was in the old, vanquished kingdom of Chang Mai. Red-shirt, anti-Bangkok support is also overwhelming from the

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Lao-populated Isaan plateau which is also the main source of poor immigrants to Bangkok. The also vanquished southern sultanates are now the locale of the Islamic uprising; they also account in part for Bangkok’s Muslim population and presentation.

2. Reading the City of Self-Colonisation The key characteristic of Bangkok is chaos. That chaos is produced by three processes. First, the ever-present visual chaos is mostly a consequence of juxtapositions of the dissimilar and even the incompatible. Western cities mostly will take quite draconian measures to avoid clashes and jarring notes by land use zoning and development controls, or else they will endeavour to hide them. Not so Bangkok. Unlikely juxtapositions are accordingly one clue to understanding the confusion before the tourist’s eye or the scholar’s analysis. Second, superimpositions also in part account for a confused world. There are activities piled on activities, screens on screens; the search for understanding must accordingly turn to what it is that the screens would mask. What is “really going on”? What is it that might be hidden beneath the layers that seem to make up the visual cacophony? Third, chaos needs to be seen as a medium for resilience and survival, more rarely also for resistance. The very art of manoeuvring through chaos is the definition of vitality and resilience for millions who go through it on a daily basis (Shahrokhi, 2007, citing Deeb, 2006). A reading of Bangkok’s chaos is therefore an exercise in understanding chaos’s function in people’s everyday life. Present Thonburi is the archetypical landscape of juxtapositions; likewise, Rattanakosin might similarly be seen as juxtapositions although here a more complex age yields a space more characterised by superimpositions.

Thonburi and Internal Colonisation Whereas superimpositions imply the erosion of clear divisions and hierarchies, juxtapositions reveal — reinforce the memory of — such hierarchies. Nowhere in the region of Bangkok is this world of differences revealed more startlingly than in the now ancient space of Taksin’s Thonburi. The Thonburi riverfront, facing Rattanakosin on the opposite riverbank, is a panorama of inconsistencies: from south to north, there is the Gong Wu Chinese shrine, the Kuwa Til-Islam Mosque with its

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Figure 1.3 Thonburi: traces from the King Taksin and early Rattanakosin eras.

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Department of Law Enforcement Santa Cruz

Wat Kalayanamit

Wat Molilokayaram

Wichaprasit Fort

Wat Arun

riverside boardwalk

Figure 1.4 Thonburi as panorama of inconsistencies: from the (Rama I) Memorial Bridge looking northwards.

“Islamic” sala (shelter), the decidedly unattractive Memorial Bridge (memorial to Phra Buddha Yotfa, Rama I), Department of Law Enforcement (nondescript modernist but with nationalistic “traditional” roof and with the chedi of Wat Prayoonwongsawas beyond), Santa Cruz church and school, Wat Kalayanamit, the entrance to Khlong Bangkok Yai, the white walls of the old Wichaprasit Fort and the Royal Thai Navy headquarters, then Wat Arun. These mirror the similar juxtapositions of communities — Chinese, Muslim, Portuguese-Thai, and Thai. Along the Chao Phraya, before the King Taksin era, there was already a Chinese community who had migrated from Ayutthaya, while Portuguese people had settled further to the south along the river, to be referred to as “Farang Kudijeen” — “Westerners at the Chinese Shrine”. Additionally, at the mouth of Khlong Bangkok Yai, was a community of Thai-Muslims. Thonburi is today best read from the more modern roads that parallel the riverbank; the following account accordingly

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traverses these roads, most notably the “modern” Thanon Arun Amarin, from north to south.

Thanon Arun Amarin The first emblematic focus of Taksin’s capital was Wat Arun Rachawararam Rachaworamahawihan. In the Ayutthaya period, it had been named Wat Makok, situated in Tambon Bangmakok (Bangkok, village of olives or makok). As King Taksin had arrived there at dawn, he renamed it Wat Jaeng, meaning “clear”, “bright” or “dawn”. Wat Jaeng at one time in the Taksin era housed the two auspicious Buddha images, the Emerald Buddha and the Phra Bang, brought from Vientiane in 1778. On 5 March 1785, in great pomp and pageantry, the Emerald Buddha was brought in river procession across to its present abode in Wat Phra Kaeo. The Phra Bang was returned to Luang Prabang. Between Wat Arun and the entrance to Khlong Bangkok Yai is the gleaming white, two-tiered Wichaprasit Fort, brilliantly visible from the river but secreted in what is now the compound of the Royal Thai Navy headquarters. Alongside the fort, in the Navy precinct, is the site of the old palace of King Taksin. It is not publicly accessible.8 We confront the typical bureaucratic defence of territory — the Royal Navy may be of The Nation, but the people of that nation are excluded. One is left to wonder about the exclusion — is it that sites bearing witness to the founding violence of the Chakri dynasty are to be erased from the popular imagination? Wat Jaeng was completely renovated in the Rama II period and renamed Wat Arun Rajtharam. Rama II intended to raise the height of the central prang of Wat Arun from its original 16 metres to 67 metres; however, it was left to Rama III to complete the work and to Rama IV to change the name to Wat Arun Ratchawararam. In the present age, though, it is principally associated with the memory of Rama II. Over the five gates to the platform are the emblems to the first five Chakri reigns: the Unalom (Rama I), the Prasart (Rama II), Garuda catching Naga (Rama III), the Great Crown of Victory (Rama IV) and the Coronet (Rama V). Religion and royalty fuse. There is additionally a cultural fusion in Wat Arun. The main prang rises in four receding stages or layers, each suggesting different origins, although the form is ultimately Khmer. The iconography, in turn, casts back to Indian sources: prominently, the god Indra rides on Erawan, the traditional Thai three-headed elephant. Then, there is the decoration

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Figure 1.5 Wat Arun as cultural fusion: Khmer-influenced form, Hindu iconography, Chinese decoration.

comprising millions of pieces of multicoloured Chinese porcelain. The multi-ethnicity of the dynasty seems to be paralleled in the hybridity of the religion and its representation, despite the zeal of its (royal) reformers. Wat Molilokayaram Rachaworawihan, near the Navy headquarters, is an old temple from the Ayutthaya period. It was earlier called Wat Tai Talat, meaning that it was next to the Thonburi market, and was enclosed, together with Wat Arun, into the palace grounds by King Taksin. It declined in the Rama I era but was restored by Rama II, who named it Wat Phutthaisawan and further by Rama III, who also changed its name. Changing names, as noted earlier, manifests power. Thai Muslims of Jaam (Persian) lineage came as foreign mercenaries in the era of King Chaiyarajadhira (r.1534–1546). This was a period of active recruitment of foreign mercenaries as well as the usual prisoners of war and corvée labour, who participated in the war with Burma

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but also in the kingdom’s infrastructure development, especially the excavation of the new canal which provided a shortcut between the present Khlong Bangkok Noi and Khlong Bangkok Yai. A consequence was a settlement of Muslims in the Thonburi area. Tonson Mosque seems to have been first constructed in 1688 (at the end of King Narai’s reign) by Chao Phraya Ratchawangsanseni or Mahmoud, son of Okya Ramadeschochai (Tip), who was a Thai peer of allegedly Persian lineage of the Sultan Sulaiman family branch and a naval commander of French forces engaged to defend Wichaprasit Fort.9 The mosque was first named Kudi Yai, an abbreviation for Kudi Bangkok Yai. Another link with the Siamese nobility came with Chao Phraya Chakree Sri Ongkaraksa (Mud), an important Muslim official in the reign of King Taksin and a great-grandfather of the mother of Rama III. Tonson Mosque and its link to Thai Muslim peers signified a relationship with the Siam court, with records of occasional visits from kings of the Rattanakosin period. One notable instance was 26 April 1946, when Rama VIII and his brother (Rama IX) made a private visit, to be received by the Imam and the mosque committee.10 The original wooden building with terra-cotta roof tiles was similar to a Buddhist wihan. It was rebuilt in brick during the Rama II period and subsequently renovated many times, for example, by Luang Koshaishaaq (Nakodali) in 1827 in the Rama III reign. By 1952, it was almost a ruin, unable to be repaired, and so was replaced with the present concrete building. The religious focus of the Kudi Khao community is Masjid (Mosque) Bang Luang. From the Rama I period, this claims to be Thailand’s only brick and concrete mosque in traditional Thai style. It was built by a Muslim merchant called To Yi. It is curiously tri-ethnic: the form is Thai, there is a Western foliage motif on the gable panel, while the flowers are in Chinese floral patterns. The tri-ethnic references are carried into the mimbar and the mirop of the interior. Two further mosques almost adjoin Tonson Mosque. There is the Dylfallah Mosque (on Thanon Itsaraphap); more interesting is Phradungtham Islam Mosque on Itsaraphap Soi (laneway) 28: whereas the Muslims of the area and their mosques are mostly Sunni, this latter is Shi’a. An original building was constructed on another site by Peng Menakom in 1936; in 1939, it was given a tetrahedron roof and dome and then, in 1943, abandoned as the navy expropriated the land. A replacement mosque was built on the present site, rebuilt in 1960 and again in 1979. Its styling is distinctive, with references to Shi’a mosques

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Figure 1.6 Muslim Thonburi: (a) Tonson Mosque (Sunni); (b) Phradungtham Islam Mosque (Shi’a).

of Baghdad — the divisions of the Islamic world can be read in the soi (laneways) of Thonburi. Wat Hong Rattanaram Rachaworawihan adjoins the Tonson Mosque. It dates from the Ayutthaya period and was originally designated Wat Chao-Khrua Hong as it was built by a wealthy Chinese named Nai Hong. Its proximity to the Thonburi palace gave it increased importance in that era and accordingly it was reconstituted as a royal monastery by King Taksin, renamed Wat Awawihan and had its area expanded in Taksin’s efforts to signify his new capital. Subsequently, its name was changed again, variously by Ramas I, II and VI, while it was significantly reconstructed and restored in the Rama III period. Wat Kalayanamit Woramawihan, like Wat Hong, is a “second class royal temple”, named after Chao Phraya Nikornbodin (Toh Kalayanamitr) who had donated his own residence and land to build the temple in 1825. Nikornbodin named the temple Kalayanamitr, signifying “good friend”, and offered it to Rama III to whom, presumably, he sought to be seen as a good friend. In 1837, Rama III in turn supported the construction of the royal wihan. There are different sorts of links to the Chakri dynasty signified in Phattayakosol House. This is an institute of Thai music, belonging to the

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Figure 1.7 Wat Kalayanamit Woramawihan: Thai and Chinese.

Phattayakosol family since the Rama I period. It has always had associations with the high royal family — all three of Rama IX’s daughters are claimed to have learnt music from them and they frequently performed at the Chitralada Palace, present principal seat of the dynasty. The house is also linked to Wat Kalayanamit: the family had lived on a raft in front of the wat until, reportedly in the Rama V period, an abbot of the wat had built the house for them (Ploenpote, 2004). The Chinese presence is reflected again in the Chinese-styled shrine of Kian Un Keng, for a statue of Guan Im, a (female) Bodhisatta. It is a more modern replacement for two earlier shrines of the Hokkien Chinese before their displacement to the Phra Nakhon (eastern) bank of the river (Sudara, 1999: 81; Van Roy, 2007: 7; 2008: 6–7). Wat Prayoonwongsawas Worawihan is to the southeast of the Santa Cruz church. Like others, its name has changed over time; it was originally Wat Rua Lek, meaning fences made from iron. Again there is the royal connection: a nobleman ordered iron fences from England for the palace fence but Rama III was displeased with them and so the nobleman took them back and used them instead for this temple, in 1828.

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Figure 1.8 Santa Cruz Church (1916, architects Annibale Rigotti and Mario Tamagno).

Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) church, the first Catholic church in Thonburi, was built in 1769 by Bishop Gorre, a French priest, and the Portuguese Christians who fled the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767. The Portuguese, however, resented the intrusion of the French missionaries and established a separate church, Holy Rosary, in Samphan Thawong on the opposite, eastern bank of the river. The original Santa Cruz church was demolished by flood, to be replaced in 1835 by Bishop Pallegoix with the second church, built in a Chinese style: the roof gable was decorated with elaborate stucco work as in a Chinese shrine (Committee of 80 Years of Santa Cruz Church, 1997: 93). The curiosity of its Chinese design led to its being labelled Kudi Jeen or Chinese Church; it is still sometimes referred to as Wat Kudi Jeen. The present church, the third on the site, was built in 1916 to a neo-Classical design by Italian architects Annibale Rigotti and Mario Tamagno. There are various great religious celebrations: Christmas Eve, Good Friday, the parade of Kaew-Ta Virgin Mary and the Holy Cross ceremony. The latter on 14 September, however, is turned royal as it is used to commemorate the gift of land from King Taksin to Bishop Gorre.

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The area surrounding Santa Cruz and its linked Catholic schools constitutes the Kudijeen community. Its population is diverse and comprises Thai, Chinese, Portuguese-descended Christians and Muslims. These groups have absorbed Thai culture but also kept many ancient ancestral traits; in particular, the Portuguese group expresses a retained cultural heritage. The area has changed little over time: its houses are densely packed, mostly wooden, and its alleys intricate; the population still reflects the diversity of the marginal groups, Chinese, European, Muslim, who fled Ayutthaya to establish the Thonburi kingdom. Mention must be made of one further element in this long string of sometimes jarring, sometimes blending survivals. Absolutely of the present is a concrete walkway along the edge of the river, still (in the 2010s) under construction. Whereas Thai non-elite space may traditionally be flowing, even amorphous, unbounded (Cuttaleeya and King, 2007), the Chao Phraya riverbanks are fragmented, divided, mostly inaccessible as individual earthly owners erect their barriers to exclude entry and walls to inhibit any movement from one riverbank property to another. The walkway is defiant: the worldly “owners” are cut off from “their” riverbank as the wider community, instead, is given its whole length for their recreational stroll. While this may restore some idea of the river or the khlong as public realm, it defies the modern (capitalist) notion of ownership. There are two inescapable lessons from the juxtapositions of Kudijeen. The first is that Siam’s ancient internal colonisation has left a patchwork of partially blended communities characterised by hybridised identities and cultural traces — Siam’s form of colonisation had involved the collection/juxtaposition of differences rather than forced homogenisation and assimilation. In the case of more recent internal colonisation, the example of Kudijeen raises a question: is a multi-cultural community in Thailand possible or are there screens, modern quests for religious purity, new fundamentalisms, imagined identities, that pose impenetrable barriers? Does the seeming contrast between Chinese-Thai hybridity — an almost unique phenomenon in Southeast Asia — and Muslim separatism signify an ever-widening rift? The second lesson relates to the historical conjoining of religion and royalty, to the point where they almost seem as one. Here barriers, like names, are permeable and immaterial. Because the Thai nation can now only be imagined in terms of this performative unification, the ideological Nation-KingReligion triad takes on its legitimating, motivating meaning.

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Rattanakosin as a Landscape of Confrontations Nation, King and Religion have been invoked as legitimating, motivating rhetoric for the modern state, especially since 1958 and the Sarit military dictatorship of that era. While all three find their clearest representation in the monuments and the public realm of the Chakri dynasty’s Rattanakosin, their troubled cohabitation is also to be read from the emblematic spaces of Rattanakosin. Rattanakosin itself is uneasily juxtaposed with the memory of Taksin’s Thonburi and of the illegitimacy of origins. Especially in the Rama IX reign, there has been a rehabilitation of the no longer threatening memory of King Taksin. So in 1981, he was declared King Taksin the Great (in time for the 200th anniversary of his execution). There is now Saphan Taksin (the King Taksin Bridge). Of course, there is also the Rama I Memorial Bridge crossing the river to Thonburi: axially located at the Rattanakosin end is the Phra Buddha Yotfa (Rama I) Monument and similarly located at the other end is the King Taksin Monument. As that axial road continues through Thonburi, it becomes Thanon Somdet Phra Chao Taksin. The Rama I statue, some 4.75 metres high, was cast by Italian sculptor Corrado Feroci to a design by Prince Naris and on the orders of Rama VII to mark Bangkok’s 150th anniversary (and, coincidentally, that of the founding of the Chakri dynasty). Clarence Aasen (1998: 142) comments that the statue depicts the monarch “as almost a Chinese emperor controlling and harmonizing the universe” and that, by facing across the river, it symbolises the unity between the two capitals and thereby the legitimacy of the dynasty — a successful feat of propaganda (citing Apinan Poshyananda, 1992: 25). The only problem with this theory is that Rama I does not face the river, but rather, Pahurat (Little India) and Chinatown. His back is turned on Thonburi. Similarly, Taksin’s monument does not look down the axis (to Rama I’s back) but obliquely into Thonburi. King Prajadhipok dedicated the Rama I monument in April 1932, to celebrate the sesquicentenary of the dynasty, two months before the overthrow of the absolutist monarchy; the Taksin monument, also designed by Feroci, was not realised until 1953, during the Phibun dictatorship, perhaps “… as an antagonistic statement towards the Chakri dynasty” (Peleggi, 2007: 189). The mutually reinforcing embrace of King and Religion, underlying so much of the complexity of meanings to be read from Kudijeen and Thonburi, is even more powerfully signalled in Rattanakosin. The white-walled compound of the Royal Grand Palace is part palace and

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b

Figure 1.9 Still confronting: (a) King Taksin (with the present Queen Sirikit), “… an antagonistic statement towards the Chakri dynasty”, and (b) Rama I, memorialised at their respective ends of the Memorial Bridge and Thanon Prachathipok, named for Rama VII. King Taksin, of course, would more likely have mounted an elephant.

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Figure 1.10 Architectural ambiguity and layered symbolism of Rama V: the Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, Royal Grand Palace (1876–1882, architect John Chinitz).

part wat. The latter is expressed in the gleaming wihan, bot, libraries, chedi, prang and the many garuda-shaped chofa of Wat Phra Kaeo, abode of the Emerald Buddha and the nation’s most sacred temple. Of the palace, the early Dusit Throne Hall (1784) mirrors the Sanphet Maha Prasat, one of the grandest buildings of Ayutthaya and part of Rama I’s strategy to claim continuity with the older tradition. Accordingly, its style is ancient and, with its stepped roofs, tiered spire and chofa, it also claims a unity with the sacred architecture of Wat Phra Kaeo.

Rama V and Cultural Self-Colonisation By the time of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r.1868–1910) a cultural self-colonisation was afoot, from a monarchy of collectors and imitators. A surface of European modernity was to be layered over the society in forms of new bureaucratic administration, centralisation of government (integrating the old colonies), dress and behaviour of the elites and,

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especially, in the architecture and urban design of the capital (Peleggi, 2002a). Beneath these surface appearances, royal absolutism and elitist privilege and control would be maintained and strengthened. It is in this context that an anomaly arises with the Royal Grand Palace’s most prominent building. The Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall was built for Rama V between 1876 and 1882 to a design by British architect John Chinitz (Broman and Kukrit Pramoj, 1984: 54–7; Chulalongkorn University, 1987: 146–8; Piriya, 1988; Aasen, 1998: 191). A somewhat hybridised, Renaissance-revival building resulted, intended to receive a crowning dome to emphasise its European claim. According to Apinan (1992: 5), however, the former regent Somdet Chao Phraya Srisuriyawongse persuaded the king to assert a Siamese identity by replacing the dome with Siamese-style spires. The result was unparalleled stylistic ambiguity, then to be compounded by a Chinese topiary garden as its landscape setting. Part of the re-imaging of the monarchy was its departure from the overcrowded Royal Grand Palace for the openness of a new, expansive, northern suburb at Dusit. Rattanakosin was substantially replanned to regularise Sanam Luang (the Pramane or royal ploughing field) and then cut-through to provide Thanon Ratchadamnoen, the Royal Way and, popularly, “the Champs Elysées of Bangkok”, as a grand processional avenue from the royal Grand Palace and Sanam Luang to the new palace complex of Dusit Garden. It will be observed following that the ceremonial turn northwards was linked to a far more functional northern expansion. Rama V turned to Italian and German architects and engineers and to Danish entrepreneurs as something of a counter to the colonising English and French. So he brought Italian architects Annibale Rigotti and Mario Tamagno to work on the new palace complex in Dusit. Rigotti designed the first branch of the Siam Commercial Bank in Talad Noi fronting the Chao Phraya river, an elegant, beautifully sited building completed in 1910. Tamagno in 1906 built the Bang Khun Prom Palace for Prince Nakorn Sawan (Paribatra), the 33rd son of Rama V; it is now the Bank of Thailand Museum. Together, Rigotti and Tamagno produced their masterpiece, the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall in the Royal Plaza, designed in 1907 and completed in 1915. The Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, “the Palace of the Immense Assembly”, sited at the apex of Thanon Ratchadamnoen, is arguably the city’s most prominent building. It is a combination of Renaissance, Baroque and neo-Classical styles, while its dome is seen to cast references

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Figure 1.11 Rama V and re-styling the regime: the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (1907–1915, architects Annibale Rigotti and Mario Temagno).

to both Rome’s St Peter’s and London’s St Paul’s (Seidenfaden, 1928: 251–60; Apinan Poshyananda, 1993: Vol. 1, 367, Vol. 2, 280–2). Surprisingly, it is not symmetrical about the Ratchadamnoen axis but quite “free form”, even “modern”. Rama V used this eclectic, hybridised architecture to represent the re-styling of his monarchy and of governance more generally. It is interesting that there appeared no similar need to signify any such reform or break in the field of the religion. There, it seems, the continuity of the regime was to be represented. Certainly, there are curious exceptions: Wat Benjamabopit is almost as much an east-west fusion as the Chakri Maha Prasat (Chatri, 2003; Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 72) while, at the sprawling Bang Pa-In palace complex, there is the Gothic Revivalstyled Wat Niwet Thamprawat alongside diverse neo-Classical, Chinese and Thai pavilions (Damrong, 1994). Tamagno continued with the Hualampong Railway Station in 1910, completed in 1912. In 1913, Rama VI ordered the rebuilding of the Santa Cruz Church, completed in 1916 and again in a neo-Classical form. Baan Norasingh, the family home of General Chao Phraya Ram Rakhop, was built in 1923 on the orders of Rama VI to a design of Annibale Rigotti — uncharacteristically, however, in a neo-Venetian

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a

b

Figure 1.12 The continuing Europisation of Bangkok: (a) Hualampong Railway Station (1910–1912, architect Mario Temagno); (b) Baan Norasingh (now Government House, office of the Prime Minister, 1923, architect Annibale Rigotti).

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Gothic style. Baan Norasingh, a palace on 11 acres of land, was sold to the Thai government in 1941, to become Government House with the offices of the Prime Minister and Cabinet — and incidentally, the preferred site for the overthrow of governments in the 21st century.11 Aasen quotes a comment from Apinan Poshyananda addressed to the Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall but which seems no less applicable to the Ananda Samakhom Throne Hall and a number of other favoured projects of the Rama V era: For many viewers, then and now, the building signifies vulgarity and kitsch, underscoring the mediocrity and banality of a hybrid architectural style created without the pressure of necessity and unguided by an organic tradition. For others, however, it is the outcome of the cult of innovation and originality which developed during the decades of cross-cultural influence (Apinan Poshyananda, 1992: 6, in Aasen, 1998: 192).

One can certainly disagree with the critique of creation “without the pressure of necessity”. While charges of aesthetic dilettantism can be levelled against Rama V, there was always the sense of necessity to refashion the Nation and to represent the new order. The sometimes wild eclecticism powerfully symbolised a selective openness to ideas and to the forms of globalisation of that time, as well as indicating the radical break from the “organic tradition”. Of course, the openness was superficial, at the level of appearances and style, manifestations of a regime of surface appearances. There were throne halls but no houses of parliament or grand courts of justice.

Other Juxtapositions The ambiguities of Nation-King-Religion are on display throughout the old city. The northern, formal entrance to the Royal Grand Palace is from Thanon Na Phra Lan. Beyond, further to the north and sandwiched between the Grand Palace and what was once the Front Palace (of the vice-king), is Wat Mahathat, housing Thailand’s oldest higher education institute for Buddhist monks. It is also the seat of the Buddhist Supreme Patriarch. The Front Palace and the vice-king was the focus of the feudal nobility’s opposition to the Rama V reforms and administrative modernisation. From 28 December 1874 to 25 February 1875, this also became the focal point of the Front Palace Crisis which eventually saw the overthrow of both vice-king and noble power, but also the dependence of Rama V on British support. Alongside Wat Mahathat and the

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Figure 1.13 The neo-Classical Ministry of Defence, symbolic military hardware now politely averted from the Royal Grand Palace — the power structure becomes explicit. The spire in the background marks the location of Lak Muang, the City Pillar, foundation point of the city.

site of the departed Front Palace and the memory of the vice-king, is the vast open ground of the Pramane, Sanam Luang, the royal field, place of royal cremations, protest and military massacre. The eastern boundary to the Royal Grand Palace is a road named Thanon Sanam Chai. Opposite the Royal Grand Palace on Thanon Sanam Chai is the Ministry of Defence, occupying the impressive, previous barracks building from the Rama V era (again in the preferred neo-Classical style of that reign). Across the front of the Ministry’s building is a fine display of many historic cannons. Until the early 2000s, their barrels were rather pointedly directed at the palace and the Emerald Buddha temple; latterly, they have been politely averted from that hallowed site. The juxtaposition may, of course, have been unintentional; the implication, however, is unavoidable. In modern Thailand, the King is the centre of the Nation and source of authority; religion provides legitimacy; real power, however, is forever with the

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military. In 1932, a semi-military coup d’état overthrew the absolutist monarchy of Rama VII, albeit in the name of democracy, to soon lead to a military dictatorship. Confronting juxtapositions occur ubiquitously in Bangkok — the elite and the poorest, the small house and the high-rise. An emblematic space within Rattanakosin is the small, tree-shaded Thanon Phra Chan with the white-washed, crenellated wall of Thammasat University, once the wall of the Front Palace, lining its north side and a row of ancient shophouses on its south. The sidewalk in front of these latter is the venue of a muddled amulet market. Elite space directly faces chaotic, disordered popular space, as is also the case with Thanon Na Phra Lan; additionally, organised, hierarchical religion faces disordered Buddhism of the streets. That particular juxtaposition evokes the Rama III agenda for royal Buddhism to supplant popular Buddhism with its primitive animist and mythic survivals. Immediately facing the Grand Palace entrance on Na Phra Lan were two wang (small palaces) from the Rama I era, Wang Tha Phra and Phra Lan. Their grounds now accommodate Silpakorn University with their surviving elements (from the Rama III age) embedded in the disorder of an art school. The street itself displays the disorder of both student activity and an amulet market of popular Buddhism — affronting, in effect, the ultimate symbols of royal Buddhism in Wat Phra Kaeo and of institutional Buddhism in Wat Mahathat.

Rattanakosin and Superimpositions The amulet markets are, in effect, layered onto the secular-commercial space of a street market which is itself layered on the more formal secularcommercial space of the shophouses. The amulet markets are themselves not unproblematic, for is this not the commercialisation of popular religion (Srisak, 1994a, 1994b)? Layering and ambiguity are to be found in the individual building (the Thai-style roof on the Neo-classical form of the Royal Grand Palace’s Chakri Throne Hall), the complex (the students of Silpakorn University and their dishevelled artistic production weaving through the royal wang of Ramas III and IV) and the street. There are also royal layers (the ubiquitous portraits in streets, on buildings, the royal shrines, the yellow and blue shirts to commemorate, respectively, King and Queen) and those of the religion (shrines, spirit houses and, upon the body, the amulets). These festoon the spaces of the city as manifestation of a “sacred nationalism” (Fong, 2009). The

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Figure 1.14 Superimpositions, layered space: Wat Mahathat, shophouses, amulet market, as popular Buddhism is superimposed on royal/institutional Buddhism.

military (periodically presenting as the guardian of “The Nation” in the legitimating triad) might be present in the ubiquitous flags; however, for the most part, it is merely the threatening shadow. As the muddled, chaotic space of Bangkok is always to be “unpacked” by stripping away the layers that constitute that muddle (inevitably to reveal the traces of things unspeakable, needing to be forgotten), consideration of these superimpositions will run constantly through the chapters that follow. There are surfaces, screens and masks; although increasing degrees of manipulation are implied in this sequence, the differences between

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a

b

c

d

e

f

Figure 1.15 Muddled Bangkok space. While the images of Figure 1.14 amply display the layered space of Bangkok streets, such layering will commonly take three forms: (a and b) visual layering (Khaosan); (c and d) functional layering (Sukhumvit and Pahurat); and (e and f ) symbolic layering (Buddhism and Christmas at Paragon Centre, reinforced royalty over Ratchadamnoen as site of democratic upheaval and fascist oppression).

them can blur and surfaces can mutate into screens which, in turn, can be invoked as masks across some inconvenient reality. So what is to be made of a world of superimposed surfaces, screens, masks? How is this to be understood?

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Superimpositions, layering, will be in three forms. Most simply, there is visual layering — advertising boards disguising the buildings behind them, the ubiquitous jungle of electric cabling across almost every façade, the unrelieved visual jumble of Bangkok. Second is functional layering — the paradigmatic case is informal economic activity across the formal. Third is symbolic, a theme of Chapter 2, where the screens of Nation, King and Religion are layered as a soothing, motivating screen across both the spaces of the city and the violence of their production.

Memory and Nostalgia The disorder of Bangkok space seems always to be overlain by another “reality” — a forever contested word in a Thai worldview. This overlying sphere is of objects that indeed seem constantly to refer back to the space of palaces and temples and to imply some sort of ordering principle across the disorder and the chaos. The reassuring images of King, Queen and Religion that effectively blanket the city seem to promise a sense of order and a better world. Pierre Nora has contemplated the conditions in which the past is re-lived as objects rather than in the deeper context of those objects.12 His purpose was to explore lieux de mémoire, “realms of memory”, though also translatable as “sites”, which may be a place, an object, a celebrated event, a name, a monument. For Nora, lieux de mémoire in the modern age take on salience because we have lost milieux de mémoire, living environments of memory. [So] with the rise of modernism and its attendant traits of globalisation, mediatisation, democratisation and massification, modern media is substituted for collective memory. What we have now is not lived memory, but reconstructed history. To compensate for this lack, sites of memory have arisen (Legg, 2005: 483–4, referring to Nora, 1989).

Rattanakosin in the present may in some sense be seen as a milieu de mémoire. Yet it is today more a “collection” of lieux de mémoire, in two senses. In the first, it is a collection of lieux de mémoire in that the practices and meanings of the past have gone; superimposition of tourists, new political contestations, new commerce, new display technologies, leave the sites denuded of content. In the second sense, Rattanakosin has long been a collection: the civilisational mission of Rama V was pursued through collection and appropriation. Maurizio Peleggi writes of the “Lords of things”, as Rama V and his royal elites

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sought to refashion their public and self image by acquiring novel material possessions and social practices mostly from the West, with the goal of portraying themselves, and thereby Siam, as modern and civilised (Peleggi, 2002a). The Western architectural dressing of otherwise Siamese institutions (palaces, throne halls) was but one example of this strategic use of modernity as a screen rather than merely as a visual layer, of which more in Chapter 5. The lieux de mémoire of Rattanakosin must mask foundational violence — the deposing and regicide of King Taksin, the “collection” of the Emerald Buddha (Rama I); the Emerald Buddha additionally masks the sacking of Vientiane and the brutal obliteration of the Lao royal family (Rama III); the Europisation of Ratchadamnoen/Dusit (Chapter 2) was in part necessary to legitimise the colonisation of the “less civilised/modernised” Lanna kingdom (Chiang Mai) and to abolish the memory of Siam’s humiliation at the hands of the British and the French (Rama V). More recent violence must also be masked in the spaces of Rattanakosin: the Democracy Monument and its indelible traces of dictatorship, Sanam Luang and the 1976 massacre of the students (Dovey, 2001). It is Ernest Renan who reminds us of compelled forgetting in the “necessary” construction of “the Nation”: [T]he essence of a nation is that all the individuals have many things in common and also that all have forgotten a great many things. All French citizens are obliged to have forgotten the Saint Bartholomew [massacre], the massacres of the Midi of the thirteenth century (Renan, 1947–1961: 892).

So, too, is forgetting obligatory in Bangkok (of which, more in later chapters).

Rattanakosin, Deconstruction and Nostalgia Any critical deconstruction of what lies beneath the successive masks of Rattanakosin faces a seemingly disabling paradox: critique stands against an undercurrent of sentimentality and nostalgia. As Stephen Legg notes, nostalgia seems to arise at two principal levels: in a melancholic yearning for “real environments of memory” (milieux de mémoire) and in a dream of the unifying power of the nation-state — in Thailand of Nation, King, Religion. Memory, argues Halbwachs (1992), is socially produced: social institutions and contexts make possible certain memories, encouraging certain recollections while discouraging others

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(the point of Renan’s aphorism, above). Legg (2005) quotes Susan Steward (1984: 23) on the nature of the nostalgic: The nostalgic dreams of a moment before knowledge and self-consciousness that itself lives on only in the self-consciousness of the nostalgic narrative. Nostalgia is the repetition that mourns the inauthenticity of all repetition and denies repetition’s capacity to form identity.

Steward’s observation leads one to wonder if the repetitions of Bangkok heritage — the cult of Rama V, new wihan as clones of the ancient, the proliferating royal portraits and shrines to royal occasions, ritualised Loy Krathong and other events — stand alongside the loss of spiritual and ecological milieux de mémoire and if Bangkok is indeed a city of mourning.13

Foundational Myths (3): Rama V, the “Theatre State” and the Radical Break This discussion above, on Nora and lieux de mémoire and the question of nostalgia, raises the question of what might be found to underlie the seeming production and cultural acceptance of a landscape of such confusion, disorder and richness and the extraordinary “otherness” (to the neo-colonising gaze of the Western visitor) of such a city. Peter Jackson (20004b) has traced the aesthetic trajectory of Siamese power from a pre-modern culture of “face” and “reputation”, manifested in a preoccupation with appearances and surface ritual (the “theatre state”), to the 19th-century development of what he terms the “performative state” (and in similar vein, Peleggi, 2002a, 2002b). The break point between these two political worlds, I would argue, can be seen written in the events of 1828–1829. Rama III had assiduously continued the projection of his kingship and regime as theatre in the building and renovating of wat, making merit, giving the robes to monks, religious reform, ritual and display. To a Thai audience, the cruelty and brutality of the destruction of the Lao royal family may not have appeared inconsistent with the constructed face of meritorious, religious conduct; to Western, “Enlightenment” principles, however, the face and the apparently underlying practice presented as unconscionably contradictory, to the point of destroying any semblance of Siam as a civilised polity.14 Western contact over the next two decades augmented a gradual shift in Western perceptions — that Siam presented as barbaric, uncivilised — and in Siamese convictions, that old practices were to be masked, most notably in the semblance of the performance of modernity.

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The shock of 1828–1829 and of subsequent contacts confronted the Western powers at precisely the time of their gathering competition for control of trade and, simultaneously, of widening media communication of “uncivilised” practices as evidence of the need for “civilising” (colonising) intrusions. To maintain its (semi-)independence in face of trade aggression and its reinforcement through civilising zeal, Siam had to mobilise a new form of local power, whereby the appearance of modernity and “civilisation” could be projected to potentially predatory foreigners. This task especially fell to Rama III’s successor King Mongkut (Rama IV). The surface appearance, however, had to remain mere surface appearance: aspects of modernity could be selectively adopted, yet tradition and autocratic rule would still be maintained. Hence, the theatre state would transform into the performative state in Jackson’s terms. There was a need to create a public field of images of a “civilised” Siam; but this was in disjuncture with the private sphere: “A defining feature of the Thai regime of images is a rigid demarcation between what is publicly unspeakable, especially in the presence of a non-Thai audience, and what is ‘common knowledge’ in private, local discourses” (Jackson, 2004b: 220). The disjuncture is traced back further, however, to a pre-modern northern-Thai episteme (way of seeing the world and constructing knowledge about it) characterised by an intolerance of ambiguity in ritual practice but with a structural ambiguity of local myths — public, royal Buddhism against ever-fluid, hybridising, ambivalence-laden popular Buddhism, in the terms of the Rama III-era distinction. There is a public/private dichotomy that seems to be paralleled in a ritual/myth dichotomy. Jackson quotes the analyses of Richard Davis (1974), to the effect that “there is a division of labour between myth and ritual in the treatment of symbols and categories”. So in northern Thai rituals, argues Davis, there is an inflexible dichotomy between “high” and “low”, and any ambiguity in this dichotomy is to be suppressed; but in myths, any violation of conceptual boundaries is to be welcomed: “While the rites [the public sphere] build up and carefully reinforce logical categories, the myths [the private sphere] obliterate and fuse these” (1974: 22). Folk epistemologies are seen to emphasise the determinative power of the “surface” over the “essence”, effectively reversing the order of Western epistemologies. [I]n their myth and ritual there is an implicit metaphysic which says that while definitional patterns are necessary to human existence, in the last

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analysis these patterns are illusory (Davis, 1974: 23; in Jackson, 2004a: 189).

Thus, present Thai society is seen as one that “encourages an essentialism of appearances or surfaces … The real is hidden and unchallenged. The surface is taken for real” (Van Esterik, 2000: 4); the collective task, it seems, is one of “social cosmetics”, to appear “caring and considerate” (kreng chai) (Phillips, 1965); the idea of public criticism must therefore be seen as problematic, although this can sometimes be overridden by seniority. Related dual logics arise at the religious level: Theravada Buddhism is itself a “face” over a hybridised belief complex of Buddhist elements that are compatible with pre-Buddhist animistic beliefs in supernatural (saksit) power. Thus, suggests Jackson, power in Thailand derives “epistemological characteristics from the distinctive metaphysic that underpins the society’s hybridized Buddhist-Brahmanical-animist religious complex” (2004b: 222). It is a perspective also argued by Mulder (1996). The point of this for the present discussion is that these dualistic logics have been played out in the space of the city: the palaces and royal wat of Rattanakosin and subsequently the government precincts of nearby Dusit have been the grand theatre of the performative state; the water-borne city of khlong, the variously floating and elevated houses, markets and periodically flooded orchards and fields have been in that tolerated private realm of myth, spirit houses, auspicious trees, and non-interference. In the present era, the performance is translated to the space of newer media — overwhelmingly to television — and in the built spaces of the city to the ubiquitous commemorative shrines to mark royal birthdays and other grand events of the surface. Privatesector property development and use, regardless of its scale, is just that: private, in the same domain as the formally unremarked-upon houses of both past and present. The streets present as depthless display even in the dimension of commercial modernism: the surface impact of Western culture is displayed in billboards, signage, architecture and capitalistpopulist lifestyles as a screen across private worlds of “the family” and its property development (Basche, 1971: 256). The peculiar form of modernity that manifests itself in Thailand is thus built on an epistemology that permits no (public) thought that would disturb the surface calm of the state (woe betide him who disrespects the King’s omnipresent portrait), nor any that would infringe the privacy of actions that might coincidentally wreck havoc on the skyline of the city, clog its roads or pollute its waterways. The symbolic

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moment when this dichotomy enters modernity can be seen as that barbarism of 1829 when King Anuvong’s family was eliminated under the veil of royal-Buddhist piety.

Buddhism and Ambivalence There would seem to be a worldview, essentially Buddhist, that all is ephemeral. Life ends, and all things presently before us are mere phenomena, surface ripples on an as-yet unknown reality (Mulder, 1996: 41–6).15 Buddhism is about the realm of pure virtue and wisdom that can emancipate us from this phenomenal world of everyday life and from lower realms of existence. Time, in Thai constructions of knowledge, may therefore imply a different experience and understanding from that prevailing in other cultures and worldviews.16 Progress may lack meaning and memory may be of a different order from a Western expectation. Buddhism, to repeat, would deal with a domain of pure, transcendental virtue and wisdom. This is the highest of four domains, on something of a continuum. Below it is the also virtuous, “trustworthy” domain of the domesticated realm, of home and of the mother, Mother Earth and Mother Rice, the domain of moral goodness. Below that again is the realm of uncertain, “untrustworthy” and potentially dangerous power, to do with loss and gain, danger and protection, characterised by a tenuous moral order. Then, finally, there is a supernatural realm of chaos and pure evil. The middle tiers — of domestic virtue and arbitrary power — constitute the everyday world of existence; of these, it is saksit, supernatural power, magic, that is the subject of the most intense concern and attention (Mulder, 1996: 42). Power is everywhere, though it condenses in specific locations and becomes animate, where it must be respected, negotiated and appeased. Here, in its animate form, it is the unseen lord of the place, the phraphuum, and virtually every home should have its small spirit house of the phraphuum where the merely temporary human occupants of that place will offer respect and reverence. We are ephemeral while the lord, the real owner, is forever. There will likely be a second spirit house, for the spirits of ancestors, the past human occupants of that place. Central is the Traibhum, the Thai Buddhist cosmogony, the doctrine of the Three Worlds. It is alleged to relate in part to “Dosapitcharatchadhamma”, possibly written as “Dasarjadhamma” (Prayut Prayutto, 2000: 29–30) which comes from the “Phra Trai Pidok” of Buddhism (triad of the Lord Buddha’s philosophical mandate, or the scriptures in general).17 Partly linked to its reformulation in

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modern times was the reformist Buddhist monk and ascetic-philosopher Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906–1993) (Sutthiwong Phongphaibun, 1983; Jackson, 2003b). The significance of the Traibhum is in three precepts: first, success is ephemeral; second, nothing is eternal and nothing is real; third, the goal of one’s destiny is to reach nirvana. In Buddhism, there is no separation in terms of class — all are equal (Prayut, 2000: 50). Peter Jackson has written about the intimate theoretical and ritualistic relationship between Buddhism and all aspects of secular life, placing religion at the centre of recent attempts to isolate, define and promote the features of a distinctive Thai identity (ekkarak Thai) (Jackson, cited in Reynolds, 1987: 155). This is because of the Traibhum’s place in the foundational definition of the modern Thai state: David Wyatt has argued that the Rattanakosin kingdom had been founded on a religious re-definition wherein it sought its rationale and legitimation and that, accordingly, King Rama I authorised a new version of the Traibhum, “The Exegesis of the Three Worlds”, produced by Phraya Thammapricha in 1802 (Wyatt, 2002: 55). A further version had been initiated by Prince Damrong, a half-brother of Rama V.18 So, it might be argued, being (and space), like time, arises in a Thai worldview differently from its presence in the worldviews of other cultures.19 There will thus be two built environments: one for humans in the form of houses and office buildings and highways, phenomenal and passing; the other for the guardian spirits, the real lords, and for the spirits of those who have preceded us. We must constantly show propitiating respect lest the spirits wreck havoc upon us. Yet that respect is essentially ritual — the spirits are capricious, hence requiring constant propitiation; yet they are also “stupid” in human terms, concerned only with surface respect and ritual and not with the real thoughts in people’s hearts. It is appearance that matters. What, then, is land? It is itself ephemeral, a manifestation of the domain of the spirits of place. Its human “ownership” is problematic and, in the villages, there are no fences or walls; even in present-day urban Thonburi, there will commonly be no clear boundaries between public and private space and, in many parts of Bangkok, there are instances where such boundaries seem glaringly inconsistent (Cuttaleeya and King, 2007).20 The dual “ownership” of land (though only the spiritual is real), its place in two worlds, is universally to be represented and the ceremonies of respect and appeasement are likewise to be enshrined, although in Bangkok, this is now often lost. In the age of Rama III, this deeply embedded understanding of a Thai-Buddhist world, the spiritual underpinnings of baan suan rim

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khlong (“house in orchard along khlong”, the dreamed perfect world of social and ecological harmony, to which we return in Chapter 2), stood against the King’s programme for “a strengthening of royal Buddhism to the prejudice of popular Buddhism”, referred to above (from Ling, 1979: 54). Ritual and the theatrical stood against the folk and popular acceptance of the chaos of nature — including the chaos of the “nature” of human society. There are other Buddhist views that also might sit uneasily with the royal, ritual and theatrical. While Buddhadasa Bikkhu has the idea of a “Buddhist economics” attributed to him, at a more fundamental level, he advocated a “Dhammic socialism” (Nantasarn, 2006: 21; Peleggi, 2007: 113). The former notion has been taken up with vigour in the rhetoric and advocacy of King Rama IX; the implications of the latter, sadly, remain less explored. Even more troubling, Buddhadasa Bikkhu advocated the belief in “no religion”. In seeking to explain Buddhist teaching through other doctrines such as Zen, Tao, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and natural science, he came to a religious worldview that rejected exclusionary religious identification (Suchira, 1992: 97). He famously observed that “in advanced perspectives there is no religious identification whatsoever” (Harris, 2007): [O]ne who has attained to the ultimate truth sees that there is no such thing as religion. There is only a certain nature which can be called whatever we like. We can call it “Dhamma”, we can call it “Truth”, we can call it “God”, “Tao”, or whatever we like, but we couldn’t particularize that “Dhamma” or that “Truth” as Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Judaism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, or Islam, for we can neither capture nor confine it with labels or concepts (Buddhadasa, 1993).

Nowhere is such a claim thrown into sharper focus than in the extraordinary juxtapositions of diverse religious representation of Thonburi — Buddhist, Chinese-Taoist, both Sunni and Shia Islam, Christian. Once one crosses the river into modern, royalist Rattanakosin, it is into a world of cosmological fusion — Theravada Buddhist and Brahman Hindu. In Rattanakosin, ambiguity reigns (in contradiction to ritual’s denial of contradiction); not so in Thonburi.

A Dialectical Utopia Bangkok elite space (Rattanakosin, the great temple complexes, the grand avenue of Ratchadamnoen, the set pieces of Dusit) might be read

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as some sort of Thai Utopia. It always stands against another image of Utopia, however, in that agrarian dreamed-of world of baan suan rim khlong (house in orchard along canal). The subsequent rise of a middle class compromised this simple juxtaposition of images in the national mind. Charoen Krung was the first venue and emblematic space of the rise of that middle class and, ultimately, of a middle-class politics — an issue for Chapter 2. This reading of Bangkok as dual, complementing Utopias would, nevertheless, be a mis-reading: these are all of the past and fail to offer pointers to any form of a likely future city. The present space of the city is one of bewildering chaos and disorder. The muddle of Bangkok space can be seen variously as juxtapositions, where dissimilar objects and spaces collide, and superimpositions where objects, spaces and activities coincide rather than collide. In one sense, juxtapositions arise in all cities — the new with the old, rich with poor, memory with obliteration — although, in Bangkok with its peculiarities of ethnicities and colonialist experiences, they can take on special significance. The superimpositions, on the other hand, are unique to Bangkok in all their three forms — visual, functional, symbolic — as argued above.

A Concluding Note: A Fractured Population This chapter has been about the phenomenon of auto-colonisation and the traces that it leaves on the modern city. Bangkok’s aggressive colonisation of its peripheral states from the late 18th century (Rama I in the service of Taksin and then on his own account) to the early 20th (Rama V’s abolition of the Lanna kingdom and of the Patani sultanate) leaves a society of deep division in the context of a nation of compelled unity. Thus, the colonisation of the north and northeast — Lanna, Isaan, the Korat plateau — leaves, as its legacy, the seemingly irreconcilable rift between city and countryside: middle class versus peasantry, yellowshirts versus red-shirts, democracy versus “new democracy”. Siam’s 18th-century annexation and subsequent suppression of the old Patani sultanate, in turn, lies beneath the uprising in the Muslim south.21 Recent years have seen increasing brutality from both sides, most notably under the repressive regime of Thaksin Shinawatra, burnings and beheadings and some 3,500 dead. The planted bombs in Bangkok have brought only limited destruction; their role has been more to create tension and to remind an urban population of the potency of terrorism.

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Meanwhile, Bangkok is a significant Muslim city as the account of Kudijeen has emphasised. Conservative estimates put the Bangkok Muslim population at around 280,000 or eight percent of the city’s population (Nagendra Kumar Singh, 2000: 235). Rattanakosin may conform more to the popular imagining of a Buddhist Siam; however, one only has to proceed eastwards into the greater part of the present metropolis to see the mosques and to sense the Muslim communities that are part of the heritage of depopulating the countryside — in this case, the south — for urban labour. The entry to the city from the newer Suvannabhumi international airport is now through a landscape that is signalled as Muslim rather than Thai-Buddhist. The Muslims may be within the Thai nation; that, however, does not imply acceptance of that location, as Michel Gilquin (2005) has recounted. A further aspect of auto-colonisation has been less directly aggressive. Sinicisation has been proceeding for centuries. Baker and Pasuk (2005: 24) present estimates of the population in the area of modern Thailand from 1800 to 2000. They suggest that in 1800, the total population was no more than two million. In a sparsely populated region, the task was to acquire population. Internal colonisation and the depopulation of invaded territories could achieve some limited gain — simultaneously adding a hybridising complexity to the centre and, in the case of Bangkok, a Muslim component. Yet a further source of population always had to be found. Hence, the waves of Chinese infiltration. Bangkok in the 19th century becomes a city of the Chinese. King Taksin’s father was a Taechiu Chinese migrant. Rama I’s mother was part Chinese. Chinese intermarriage and hence ethnicity ran through the history of the Chakri dynasty including that of King Vajiravudh (Rama VI), the most circumspect of the Bangkok kings in his attitudes to the Chinese (Mead, 2004). Prime ministers have been Chinese, including Chuan Leekpai and, most notably, Thaksin and Samak Sundaravej, also Abhisit Vejjajiwa. As with other Southeast Asian cities, Bangkok is in large measure a Chinese real estate; additionally, it is increasingly also a Chinese polity. With the urban middle class (and the royalty?) being increasingly Sino-Thai — even in colonised Lanna (Thaksin) — a Thai identity becomes problematic. The countryside (the red-shirted realm), by contrast, is decidedly less Chinese. Then, there is that further manifestation of auto-(self-)colonisation, in the cultural appropriations of the Rama V era: Siam would be “modern” and “civilised” by accreting to itself the appearances of Western modernity. This, however, is also to be seen in relation to economic colonisation — Chapter 2.

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Chapter 2

Landscapes of the Modern Age and the Second Level of Colonisation Charoen Krung, Silom, Ratchadamnoen Thanon Charoen Krung runs from the old city of Rattanakosin downstream along the Maenam Chao Phraya eastern riverbank, serving the succession of Bangkok’s early ports, Chinese and Western trading companies and the early Western embassies. Together with the grand ceremonial avenue of Thanon Ratchadamnoen, it constitutes the landscape from which tensions and anomalies of 19th- and early 20thcentury Bangkok can most immediately be read. The second level of colonisation refers to direct, foreign intrusion and appropriation. While Siam retained political sovereignty as traditionally understood, this can in some measure be seen as a screen — an illusion — across the West’s commercial and economic intrusion, both as predator and as reformer. Charoen Krung carries the traces of these subversions which, in large measure, were the foundation of the present, hybridised Thai economy. That screening, in part illusory political sovereignty, was itself assured by the Thai monarchy throwing a “Western” mask across the nation and the city. Ratchadamnoen is the quintessential landscape of that endeavour and where its never fully resolved tensions and contradictions are still to be sensed. Paralleling the structure of Chapter 1, these present landscapes will be approached (1) through their production and (2) through the meanings that are to be read from them.

1. Economic Colonisation and the Production of the Modern City The Misleading Idea of Colonisation One of the enduring myths in the imagining of modern Siam-Thailand is that Siam itself was never colonised. Perhaps, however, it was never 43

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colonised because it never needed to be. Nicholas Tarling (1989: 11; also 2001) argues in relation to British colonial policy that British power in the late 18th century can be understood in two circles of interest: (1) the enveloping ambit of its worldwide commerce, necessitated by its role as the first industrialising power; and (2) the ambit of its political and territorial control. The two did not always correspond, with the first far more important. The first always needs local indigenous collaborators and it is only when there are no collaborators, or the collaborators are ineffectual, that territory falls out of the first circle and into the second. Decolonisation, in turn, was about creating the conditions whereby territory could pass smoothly out of the second phase and back into the first — empire should be seen as a transitional arrangement. Britain’s real interests were Europe, China and India — Southeast Asia was only interesting incidentally. An “independent” Siam had special value as a buffer between British interests in India and Burma and incidentally in the Straits Settlements, and the French in Indochina. All the time, the Siamese skilfully maintained their collaboration — whereas dynastic disputes in the Malay states led to such a situation of chaos that, by 1874, no collaboration was possible and so British territorial intervention became inevitable, Kings Mongkut (Rama IV, r.1851– 1868) and Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r.1868–1910) could maintain the semblance of stability and threats to trade and commerce could be avoided. To Tarling’s two circles of interest, a third must be added: the postEnlightenment scientific mind saw “the Orient” as a field of scholarly endeavour, to be appropriated intellectually and discursively through the power of the Western gaze. For Edward Said, this third circle of interest — the Orientalist, of scholarship and learning — was a Western (essentially French and English) conceit, appropriating and one-way (the East did not similarly analyse the West), an immense discursive activity, rigorous, and increasingly institutionalised. The Orientalist focus on Siam was from the beginning more through a French than a British intellectual eye and increasingly institutionalised, for example in the Siam Society (founded 1904). The distinguished French scholar George Coedès was especially influential in the early 20th century with his focus on the “Indianisation” of Southeast Asia and on the Siamese “cultural matrix” (Coedès, 1948, 1968, 1977; but see the critique in Wolters, 1999; also Reynolds, 2006: 39). Similarly, influential in the Eurocentric, “official nationalism” turn of the 1920s and 1930s was the Italian Corrado Feroci, instrumental through the Academy of Fine Arts, subsequently Silpakorn University. Yet it is instructive that the

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most significant public intellectual of that era, King Vajirivudh (Rama VI, r.1910–1925), wrote and published his polemics mainly in English, which thereby became quite early the language of nationalistic disputation (Reynolds, 2006: 292–3). The three circles of the Western appropriation of Siam — economic infiltration, territorial intrusion and discursive Orientalism — were always in action, though there were significant waves: the mid-19thcentury treaty era, the early 20th-century territorial expansion of Malaya, the Japanese disruption (certainly more Western than Asian), America and the Vietnam War, the cultural neo-colonisation of the present. What follows is a sort of selective history of these intrusions, told through the geography of the city’s streets. There is simple trade, whose relics pepper the city as objects; it is analogous with Tarling’s first circle of colonialist incursion and the subject of the present chapter. Another level, also of trade, is the “landscape of consumption”, though this may be a misleading label: it is more a landscape of intersecting, contradicting, multiple modes of production, exchange and consumption. It will preoccupy Chapter 3. Then, there is cultural erosion for Chapter 4. Finally, there is the Orientalist — the discursive colonisation of “the periphery” (Asia) by “the centre” (the West) in Chapter 5. All at present co-exist. While Thonburi — that earliest Bangkok introduced in Chapter 1 — evidences aspects of the internal (self-)colonisation of Siam, it is Charoen Krung that better shows both the complexity of internal colonisation and its intersection with the later intrusions of Western colonial intent.

Charoen Krung, the Chinese and the Europeans The compromises of Rama IV, having to manage the contradiction between the theatrics of the state and the despotism of practice, in part account for Charoen Krung. Earlier compromises of Rama I, symbolically marginalising the Taechiu Chinese, yield the peculiar distribution of communities (Indians, Chinese, and Europeans — themselves differentiated) that are linked by Charoen Krung. Modern historiography, like popular Western fiction and film, has portrayed King Mongkut (Rama IV) as facing the need to portray himself and his state as siwilai — civilised. Popular story also has it that the expanding community of Western expats petitioned Mongkut to provide them with a place where they could ride their horses and get “healthy exercise” and that, in 1862, the king constructed Thanon

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Charoen Krung (“Prosper the City”) — the “New Road” — for their enjoyment (Smithies, 1993: 37). This would be a “third space”, following the line of the river, in contrast with the “first (elite) space” of royal-religious Rattanakosin (and, as if in reflection, Taksin’s Thonburi) and the “second space” of the aquatic city of villages, orchards and rice. Mongkut may have been so obliging to the eccentricities of the farang (foreigners) in providing them with this third space of Charoen Krung for their leisure although it is likely that the expansion and control of trade also had much to do with it. As Davisi Boontham (2001, 2003, 2005) has shown, the history of Charoen Krung is to be read in the context of successive and competing waves of trade and commercial activity (also see Hong, 1984). After the 1767 destruction of Ayutthaya and the re-establishment of the Siamese kingdom centred on Thonburi, trade was partly under royal and aristocratic control. However, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, it was mostly in the hands of the diasporic Chinese; and the Chinese were concentrated on the opposite, Rattanakosin bank of the river. Then in 1782, the Chakri dynasty was founded and the capital shifted to the Rattanakosin side, with the Chinese relegated to the area of Sampheng, downstream and beyond the second defensive moat (Khlong Ong Ang). As observed earlier (Chapter 1), the Chinese thus relegated were mostly Taechiu, as had been the deposed Taksin, and accordingly distrusted by the new regime and its embedded Hokkien allies. The less threatening Indians, by contrast, were just within the moat, in the Pahurat area. Where trade was under royal control, the port was, appropriately, at Tha Chang pier in Rattanakosin (the foundational centre) under the watchful eye of the royal administration. The principal port, however, was that of the Chinese at Sampheng, downriver from Rattanakosin. As the settlement thrived, so did the need for labour increase. Successive waves of Chinese immigration increased both the density and the ethnic diversity — Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese added to the Taechiu and, consequently, to the tensions of secret society-linked gang warfare. Chinatown became a maze of uncontrolled alleys and passages as a contested domain, linked to the riverside docks and their commerce (Van Roy, 2007: 7–8; 2008).

Pahurat and the Indians The Indian community, within the second moat, seems to have formed a buffer between the Thai elite and the Chinese along Charoen Krung.

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Figure 2.1 Charoen Krung and its juxtapositions: Rattanakosin, Pahurat, Sampheng, the European intrusions then, beyond, Rama III’s junk wat to commemorate the passing of the Chinese trade.

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Sandhu and Mani (2006: 925–6) have recounted that the Indian community was very fragmented, mostly on lines of origin and religion (Sikh, Hindu, Muslim). One focus of the community is Thanon Pahurat, constructed in 1898 and named in memory of Somdet Chaofah Pahurat Maneemai, a daughter of Rama V. Another focus is the six-storeyed Sikh temple, Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, white, gold-domed and built in 1932.1 The Guru Singh in the 20th century became the focal point for all Sikhs in Thailand (Bohwongprasert, 2006). Though Punjabi Hindus and Sindhis will attend its Sunday morning services, it has in recent times become increasingly Sikh in orientation — the boast is that “The Sikhs in Bangkok have become more Sikh than those in India” (Mani, 2006: 932). The real commercial focus of Pahurat Little India, however, is the labyrinth of alleys that constitute Pahurat Market and its ramifications. Immediately across the moat is the equally labyrinthine Sampheng Lane and its offshoots, although this is in Chinatown and is clearly Chinese in its commercial activity. Sampheng, however, expands and the Chinese stallholders and more formal businesses now colonise Pahurat. Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown cites the family firm of Ahmed Ebrahim Nana to demonstrate the ability of an Indian trader to move from small-scale commodity trading in the 19th century to large-scale property development by the 1930s (Brown, 1994: 214). Nana’s father and grandfather had settled in Ayutthaya around 1830 as rice and opium traders, prospering on the exchange of commodities (opium from Calcutta and Iran exchanged for rice, rice exchanged for sugar from Java) as a way of overcoming lack of capital. As the deep water of Bangkok progressively gave it advantage over old Ayutthaya, this form of business shifted to the Pahurat and Sampheng area. A.E. Nana headed the firm in 1890 until his death in 1934 and is notable for his ability to maintain a high level of debt financing over that very long period, enabling him to compete with well-capitalised Chinese and Thaiaristocratic interests. As Brown observes, Nana’s excellent communication networks enabled him to seize opportunities that arose from the rise and fall of markets (Brown, 1994: 214–5). Nana began to buy land and property in Bangkok from the 1890s and, in 1915, set up the Randery Burah Makan Co. Ltd as a holding company for these investments — again, with very little capital. Although the city was a “sea of mud”, constructed roads and iron bridges in the Rama V era increasingly facilitated development; electrified tramways were introduced in 1894 and a train service was ex-

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tended into Bangkok in the 1890s. Nana ensured that, when he built, he controlled the access. He also ensured good relations with the Thai royal family: in projects undertaken with Prince Narathip, he would link land development with the expansion of public transport — the prince was both a land and a public transport developer. He also undertook developments with Nai Lert and, when Nai Lert had temporary financial difficulties in the 1930s, Nana was able to take over much of his land (Brown, 1994: 215–6). A.E. Nana was assisted in his dealings with the royal family and government through the fortuitous coincidence of being a British subject (therefore enjoying treaty protection and consular access) and not being British (hence not subject to the suspicions held of Westerners). He was also assisted by being Muslim and hence trusted at a time, in the 1910s, when Sikhs were politically suspect and excluded from Bangkok society (Mani, 2006: 926; also Sindhu, 1993). The Aliens Act in the 1930s denied land ownership to those not covered in the special treaties; accordingly the Chinese and Indians were exempted as they were, or promptly became British or French citizens. Even the 1932 end to royal rule helped Nana, as he was able to assist various royals by purchasing their land. The main areas of A.E. Nana’s development activities were in central and south Bangkok. He most notably held vast plots along Thanon Sukhumvit and is reputed to have politely declined to give his name to that road.2 Instead, we today have Sukhumvit Sois 3 and 4 named for him.

Chinatown The Chinese may have been relegated out of inner Rattanakosin but never suppressed, and the 19th century saw the opening of the floodgates of the junk trade, to Bangkok as to elsewhere in Southeast Asia. China’s 1842 defeat in the Opium Wars had special consequences for Siam: although it ruined the Siam-China junk trade, causing Bangkok commerce to look elsewhere for markets, it also offered a salutary lesson for Siam on the consequences of defying British demands for “free trade”. In 1855, King Mongkut (Rama IV) invited John Bowring, governor of Britain’s opium capital of Hong Kong, to negotiate a trade treaty (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 45). The treaty ended the already fading system of royal trading monopolies (thus aiding the Chinese traders), equalised the taxes on Western and Chinese shipping while also granting

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British extra-territorial rights, thus opening the way for Western shipping while also legalising semi-colonisation. The treaty also granted British rights to import opium for sale through a royal monopoly (ensuring a lucrative new stream of royal revenue). Treaties with other European powers followed. Although the Chinese port at Sampheng subsequently declined, as the focus of shipping activity shifted downstream (and thereby further along Charoen Krung) to the new Western settlements, the Chinese communities could diversify their commercial activities and Sampeng transformed (Van Roy, 2007: 203–10). Estimates put the number of Chinese in Siam in the 1850s at some 300,000 (including those well embedded in the royal family). Despite the concentration in Sampheng, there was no identifiable Chinese “community” with clear leaders who could be suborned by the court in the long-established pattern of Siamese control of ethnic minorities. As Baker and Pasuk (2005: 48) observe, they were too many, too varied, too ethnically divided and too dispersed. They could also be unruly, armed, organised though unobservable through their secret societies (angyi or samakhom lap) and periodically posing the nightmare of their potential to take over the city. The government therefore adopted a policy of liang angyi, “nurturing the secret societies”. This policy, however, could backfire spectacularly: Sampheng had descended into the usual, lucrative vices that beset Chinese communities of the time, in opium, gambling and prostitution. The secret societies or triads moved in on the action. Rivalry between different dialect groups and their gangs arose and, in 1889, this erupted into all-out gang war. The Royal Thai Army mounted a military operation to restore order; a military regiment advanced into the Yaowarat (Chinatown) area as the Royal Thai Navy landed marines from the river to block escape routes. The rioters were routed, their leaders beheaded and the appearance of order restored.3 The spatial disorder of old Sampheng is observable from the present labyrinth of its tiny laneways. A measure of order was imposed by the Rama V government with the construction of the wide but winding Thanon Yaowarat, approximately parallel to Charoen Krung, and running for one-and-a-half kilometres from Khlong Ong Ang (the second moat of old Rattanakosin and the beginning of the Chinese settlement) to Wat Traimit Withayaram Worawihan (the Temple of the Golden Buddha). Yaowarat’s construction in the period 1892 to 1900

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was much resisted by the Taechiu and their secret societies whose land was appropriated for its exceptionally wide carriageway. The success of various resistant and influential landholders and the threats from local slum communities forced the road eventually to take a curiously winding path. The appropriated frontage land was transferred to the Privy Purse, forerunner of the present Crown Property Bureau, who promptly assumed the lucrative role of its developers (Van Roy, 2008: 17). Yaowarat became Thailand’s greatest concentration of the Chinese and Bangkok’s first central business district; it also became the first road to be lined with tall buildings — seven-storeyed and nine-storeyed buildings on both sides — together with many noted Chinese restaurants and retail outlets and with the Chaloem Buri Cinema, the most modern of its era.4 The evidence of 1920s Chinese prosperity manifested on Yaowarat and Charoen Krung, corroborated by the proliferation of Chineseinitiated shophouse developments throughout the city of that era, clearly demonstrate Bangkok of that time as a Chinese real estate and the Chinese as the community of entrepreneurship and economic vigour. While the old Thai royal and aristocratic elite — albeit heavily intermarried with the Chinese — might have retained control over land, the bourgeoisie were solidly Chinese. In his Southeast Asia: A Modern History, Nicholas Tarling (2001) observes that even the 1932 coup (the “democratisation”) rode largely on the support of a Chinese bourgeoisie and that the official (Thai and Sino-Thai) elite were subsequently galvanised to intervene to reduce the political power of the Chinese — a power that was no doubt beginning to match their undisputed economic power. However, he questions, was this not a colonial era? Indeed, in 1909, the Qing government had promulgated the principle of a jus sanguinis — all persons of Chinese descent through the male line were to be claimed as Chinese citizens regardless of where born or how many generations since their ancestors had departed the fatherland (Andaya and Andaya, 2001: 207). The Southeast Asian region (Malaya, Siam) was seen as an integral part of a wider Chinese world and potentially fertile ground for financial support to a penurious Middle Kingdom.

Chinatown, the Chinese and Family Capital Chinatown’s global reach is well illustrated in the case of Charoen Pokphand Group. The Chia brothers, Ek Chor and Siew Whooy, started

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a

b

c

Figure 2.2 Shades of Chinatown: (a) The Odeon Circle at the junction of Thanons Charoen Krung and Yaowarat with right to left: the emblematic pailou (Chinese gateway), the (Thai) Wat Traimit (Temple of the Golden Buddha) and Chinese shrine; (b) Thanon Yaowarat; (c) Sampheng market.

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a small seed shop called “Chia Tai”, importing seeds from China for sale to Thai farmers. The brothers took the Thai name of Chearavanont when Thai nationalism led to the suppression of Chinese names. As produce from the seeds flourished, Chia Tai moved towards the production of animal feed, thence to an integrated livestock farming enterprise and, by 2009, Thailand’s largest agribusiness firm. CP Group became the fifth largest feed mill operator in the world with 144 mills, most notably in India, China and the United States.5 In China, CP Group is still known as Chia Tai. CP subsequently diversified into education (the Chearavanont Uthit Schools), telecommunications (True Corporation Plc, as an “integrated communications solution provider”), automotive and other industrial products and, almost inevitably in a Thai context, into real estate and land development. True was established in 1990 as TelecomAsia and now controls Thailand’s largest cable and satellite TV provider, True Visions, resulting from a merger with Shinawatra’s IBC Cable, Thailand’s largest Internet provider (ISP), True Internet, and Thailand’s third largest mobile phone service provider, TrueMove (Ukrist and Baker, 2008). The CP Group was for a time a partner in Tesco Lotus with the British Tesco group and in Makro stores with that chain’s Dutch parent — the lotus is CP Group’s corporate symbol. In 2003, it moved out of those enterprises, in part to manage its difficulties following the 1997 financial crisis and in part to focus on its 7-Eleven flagship retail operation (Veerayooth, 2008: 85). By 2009, it could report 4,030 stores in its 7-Eleven chain, growing at a rate of 400 stores per year. The company has, however, retained its participation in Tesco Lotus outlets in China. By 2009, CP Group had 79 Lotus SuperCenters distributed across China. Its Super Brand Mall in Shanghai’s Pudong could boast to be China’s “first and largest one-stop shopping and entertainment complex”.6 CP Group has not been without controversy. Charoen Pokphand Group was a major contributor to Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party. General Prem Tinsulanonda had been Chief Advisor to the CP Group but, in early 2007, needed to resign from this position in order to distance himself from a military junta-led corruption investigation into the CP Group’s alleged bid rigging in a rubber sapling supply contract during the Thaksin administration. General Prem, as noted earlier, is Chair of the Privy Council and hence Chief Advisor to the King as well as, previously, to CP Group. The Charoen Pokphand Group is one of

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the very few organisations in Thailand authorised to use the royal garuda emblem and the Chearavanont family is Thailand’s wealthiest. Also controversial has been Charoen Pokphand Group’s link with Neil Bush, brother of erstwhile American president George W. Bush.7 The tentacles of Chinatown and Charoen Krung can reach far. CP is omnipresent in the imagery of the city. Their 7-Eleven outlets are throughout the city’s streets — only the poorest of informal and squatter communities seem free of them; every BTS Skytrain station periodically carries advertisements for CP Foods; advertising boards project their logo and images of their instant meals. It is Chinese corporate triumph but indigenous decline: the success is always at the expense of the traditional markets, the poor vendors with their cooked foods hauled on trolleys along the soi and trok or on small boats along the surviving khlong. It is the corporate erosion of old community institutions and networks. If one were to suggest that, complementing the screens of Nation, King and Religion, there is also a screen of corporate capital, tending to offer a sense of order across the turmoil of Bangkok trade, then CP and its 7-Eleven offshoot would be the most instantly recognisable components of such a screen. The story of the Chearavanont family and CP is repeated at varying scales across the corporate history of Thailand. As Akira Suehiro (1989) has noted, it was Chinese immigrant families who were the real beneficiaries of the high age of colonialism in Thailand. Chinese with profits from trading and tax farming allied with aristocratic families to enjoy capital accumulation from land and to exploit the new opportunities (Natenapha, 2008: 34). Corporate Thailand is mostly a Chinese family enterprise. Mention must be made of the Chirathivat family. Tiang Chirathivat opened a general merchandise store in Chinatown’s Samphanthowong district in 1947. Samrit Chirathivat then established the first Central Department Store in Wangburapha, Phra Nakhon Bangkok, in 1957. In 1980, the family’s property development group, Central Pattana, was established; its first shopping centre, Central Plaza Lat Phrao, opened in 1982. The Robinson Department Store group merged with Central in 1995. Their grand flagship shopping mall, Central World at the Ratchaprasong intersection, effectively the city’s commercial hub, reopened in 2006 after three years of renovation. On 19 May 2010, the red-shirt uprising destroyed it.

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The West in Bangkok The Europeans settled still further down the river and thereby yet further along Charoen Krung; their port is today replaced by ferry piers and five-star hotels — a more recent collaboration with globalising trade. The relics of Rama IV’s and Rama V’s accommodation with the West are littered through the present jumbled fabric. Where Khlong Phadung Krung Kasem, the third or outer moat of the old city, enters the Chao Phraya river, there is the Holy Rosary Church (Kalawa Church) with the elegant, colonial-style Siam Commercial Bank building on one side of the khlong (architect Annibale Rigotti, 1910) and, on the other side, the Portuguese Embassy, the first Western legation in Bangkok. All three front on to the river. The British Embassy once adjoined that of Portugal; its site was subsequently taken by the main Siam post office. The French Embassy, some 250 metres downstream from that of Portugal, also faces the river; however, it is its approach from Thanon Charoen Krung that interests: this is via the occasional goat market that services the adjoining Harun Mosque and its community. The old Oriental Hotel is mostly submerged in later modernist luxury, although there is still the Catholic Centre with the Romanesque Revival Assumption Cathedral, the East Asiatic Company’s neo-Italianate offices, the old but now derelict Customs House, other port-related stores and always the proliferating shophouses. This European colonialist stretch of Charoen Krung has Bangkok’s greatest collection of antique, heritage and jewellery shops; additionally, in its soi are to be found colonial era remnants now recycled as heritage and art markets (the OP Centre and Garden pre-eminent among them) and others clearly awaiting their re-awakening. A curious misplacement: despite Rama III’s conservatism and his leaning towards China (Vella, 1957), he foresaw the 19th-century eclipse of China and of the junk trade but wanted to leave a memorial to its impending passing. Wat Yannawa, on the Bangkok bank of the Chao Phraya, dated from the Ayutthaya period but, to the king, presented an opportunity for a more modern memorial. In 1824, he ordered construction of an immense wihan built in the form of a Chinese sea-going junk: the ship itself is constructed in concrete, rising from its “deck” are two gold-topped chedi to represent its masts, while inside the “wheelhouse” above the stern is the altar with a variety of sacred objects and highly-revered statues. The junk pagoda also depicts Buddhist conceptions of nirvana, where the idea behind its construction relates to the story of Vessandorn, describing the Lord Buddha’s

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c

Figure 2.3 Europised Charoen Krung: (a) the Siam Commercial Bank; (b) Holy Rosary Church; and (c) the East Asiatic Co. with, beyond, the neo-Classical styled State Tower (for Chapter 5).

last incarnation before attaining enlightenment when he gave away his own children to a Brahman beggar. In Buddhist accounts, this greatest act of renunciation and sacrifice enabled him to reach nirvana and save humankind. Thus, the junk at Wat Yannawa is symbolic of the divine vehicle that takes humanity across the river of suffering to the shore of enlightenment.8

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Figure 2.4 The junk wihan of Wat Yannawa: Religion is joined by a monument to Rama III (King) and ancient cannons (Nation). Nation-King-Religion commemorates the goodness of (Chinese) trade.

All this, incidentally, is to mark the anticipated passing of a lucrative trade. There is also the implication that, if this boat is indeed to pass across the river of suffering (the Chao Phraya?) to enlightenment, then that would be to Thonburi and to memories of a Chakri-vanquished realm. The other symbolic misplacement is in its physical location. While it would once have stood on the shore to greet the ships entering the area of the city, the downstream extension of the city in the next reign, along Charoen Krung, placed it inappropriately in the burgeoning European settlements that indeed represented the passing of the junk trade.

Thanon Silom The more modern Thanom Silom began in 1851 as part of a dyke and irrigation system into the agricultural hinterland of Charoen Krung. As recently as the 1950s, it and the parallel Thanon Sathorn were still mostly orchards and housing compounds of the affluent, presenting the image of a leafy bungalow suburb (Askew, 2002: 42), although already shops

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and other commercial activity were migrating from Charoen Krung to new shophouses in Silom. Private ownership of reasonably large landholdings facilitated the felicitous conjunction of Thai elitist land ownership and Sino-Thai capital and entrepreneurship. In the 1920s, its far northeastern reaches also become the locale for Rama VI’s endowment of Lumpini Park, a 360-rai (57.6-hectare) park on royal property, as a rare incidence of open space in the city. The monument to Rama VI stands at the southwestern entrance to the park. The most dramatic transformation of the Silom district was in the era from the 1970s to the 1990s: the central business focus shifted from Charoen Krung, inland to Silom and Sathorn, with the new corporate headquarters of the rising corporate giants (Charoen Pokphand, Bangkok Bank, among others). By the late 1980s, Silom was the clear central business district of Bangkok, of high-rise office and condominium towers and successor to Charoen Krung. The transformation of Silom was assisted by the American invasion of the Vietnam War (more for Chapter 3). As centre of corporate Bangkok, it also became a focus for the 2010 red-shirt uprising as well as for the military’s most strenuous defence — elitist capital as inseparable from the Nation.

Thanon Rama I, Thanon Ratchadamnoen The other significant east-west road was Thanon Rama I. The eastern wall of the Royal Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo compound faces the beginning of Thanom Kalayana Maitri which leads, eastwards, to Sao Ching Cha, the Giant Swing. From there, the eastwards road is renamed Thanon Bamrung Muang, pushing out from Rattanakosin into the muddy, fertile eastern hinterland and the previously only khlongaccessible agricultural heartland of the city. When it crosses the outer moat (Khlong Phadung Krung Kasem), its name changes to Thanon Rama I. As Thanon Rama I was extended further eastwards in the early 20th century, for a short distance as Thanon Phloenchit and then as Thanon Sukhumvit, it became both the road access to the eastern seaboard and the armature on which the city itself grew. Sukhumvit will be a principal concern for Chapter 3. Thanon Rama I and its extension to Ploenchit and Sukhumvit grew almost accidentally; Thanon Ratchadamnoen, by contrast, was planned. Ratchadamnoen (ratcha — royal, and damnoen — walk) is a spatial expression of the age and the vision of Rama V: a surface of

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modernity over the “feudal” city — “Lords of things” (Peleggi, 2002a), the “performance state”. It is many things: the nation’s claim to modernity and siwilai in the age of Rama V (Thongchai, 2000), the avenue of royal progress and ceremonial celebration, significantly moving such celebration from the static venue of Sanam Luang, the Pramane or royal field, to a space of mobility — from “place” to a “space of flows”. Ratchadamnoen is also a ceremonial expression of an economic imperative. The Bowring Treaty of 1855 had marked Siam’s reorientation away from China and towards the West (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 45); it also compelled an expansion of rice production for both an increasing urban population and subsequently for export. The city’s rice bowl to the east (the Khlong San Saeb corridor) needed to be augmented by agricultural development northwards; the khlong network was substantially expanded to the north and, accordingly, the city likewise opened up towards the north with the new Dusit elite residential district. Ratchadamnoen was the noble boulevard to Dusit. Ratchadamnoen is profoundly political in another sense: it breaks open the old spaces, polity and economy of Rattanakosin and its Charoen Krung extension. Michael Herzfeld (2006) suggests that, in the case of Thailand, the creation of large open spaces in city contexts generates a marked contrast with local tolerance of crowding, thereby representing the intrusive presence of regimentation and aesthetic domination. Ratchadamnoen signifies the decentralisation and intrusion of control into the intricate, sheltering, labyrinthine spaces of the city and nation.

Modernisation of the City: The Filling of the Khlong The pressures of international diplomacy (or impending colonisation) compelled Ramas IV and V progressively to embrace the appearances of Western modernisation, effectively as a screen behind which traditional royal power could be reinstated and reinforced. The embrace, while superficial, was nonetheless enthusiastic: admiring attitudes towards development (kan pattana) and civilisation (khwam charoen or khwam siwilai ) of foreign, initially European, countries inspired a number of projects to change the evolution of the society. The two principal legacies from that time that have most affected the spatial organisation and characteristics of Bangkok in the present day are, first, the construction of the thanon (road) network, superimposed over the antique, aquatic world of the khlong and ultimately supplanting it (though never

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Figure 2.5 The northern extension of the khlong system (based on data in Piyanart, 1982). This depiction of the khlong is far from complete as many are omitted. Its purpose here is to contrast the intricate labyrinth of earlier regimes with the purposive, industialised (northern) pattern of the Rama V era.

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Figure 2.6 Ratchadamnoen Nok and the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall: Rama V’s emulation of Paris, Berlin …

completely) and, second, implementation of the new title deed (chanod ) system for land (Paladisai, 1999: 7, 23–31; Sujit, 2001: 120–1; Cuttaleeya and King, 2007: 58).9 These reforms were predominantly directed towards the private realm (as distinct from that of the elites and the theatre state); a century and more later, they have still only partly worked their way through the greater Bangkok metropolis, let alone up-country Thailand. Porphant and Yoshihiro (2001) used the 1893 Bangkok Postal Census to observe the place of the Chinese in late 19th-century Bangkok, the era of Rama V’s selective modernisations. Surprising was the revelation of a market for rented shophouses (nearly all brick), with the royal family and members of the nobility prominent among those providing capital for shophouse construction, while it was largely Chinese commercial groups who were the tenants. Thai household heads were 69 per cent of the total, Chinese 27 per cent and Westerners one per cent. Despite the vigour of road building, it was still an aquatic city: while

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7,790 “houses” were recorded to be on “roads and lanes”, some 9,461 were in “clustered villages along rivers” (presumably including khlong) and 14,905 were on “irrigation canals” (certainly khlong) (2001: 386). That all changed in the earlier part of the 20th century. The roads and bridges opened the marshes to terrestrial development; the Chinese and their royal and aristocratic collaborators increasingly turned the city into a Chinese/elite real estate with the Indians (A.E. Nana as exemplar) also heavily implicated (Porphant, 1999).

The Tramways It is ironic that, in 2009, Bangkok mooted plans to open a new tram to travel from the Hualamphong station (and MRT subway terminal) to Chinatown’s Thanon Yaowarat, allegedly for the benefit of the tourists. Charoen Krung reverts to the farang-placation of the Rama IV era; the greater irony, perhaps, is in the coincidence that this was the route of Bangkok’s first tram when, in the Rama V era, Westerners put down the capital to operate an electric tram from the City Pillar (at the northeast corner of the Grand Palace) along Charoen Krung to its southern end at Thanon Tok. Disappointingly, the new “tram” was to be a bus dressed as a tram. The Bangkok tramway system ran from 1894 to 1968. As well as (1) the early Bangkholaem line along Charoen Krung, there was (2) a City Circle line approximately paralleling the second moat and the Chao Phraya riverbank. The Samsen line (3) ran from Bang Sue in the north of the city along Thanon Samsen, Thanon Ratchini (alongside the inner moat), to Pahurat, then Thanons Yaowarat and Rama IV to the new districts of Sala Daeng and Khlong Toey. A Dusit line (4) duplicated the Samsen line along Thanon Samsen but then turned southeast on Thanon Phitsanulok, thence south to Thanon Chakkaphatdi Phong and Thanon Worachak to Chinatown. The Hualamphong line (5) went from the Bang Lamphoo intersection with the City Circle line south along Thanon Tanao, east on Thanon Bamrung Muang and finally south again on Thanon Krung Kasem along the outer moat to the main Hualamphong railway station. Branching from the Hualamphong line was (6) the Silom line along Silom (the emerging central business district) and Ratchadamri. A Yotse line (7) ran along Thanon Rama I, in effect as an eastward spur off the Hualamphong line. There were additionally another three spur lines.10 In the 1950s, the Thanon Rama I line was extended to Thanon Phloenchit; the company wanted to

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extend this further to Soi Wattana (Sukhumvit 19), but this was blocked by the Maenam Railway whose Makkasan-Maenam track it would need to have crossed. In Thonburi, the Mae Khlong Railway was a private concession founded in 1901 by Phraya Phiphatkosa (Selestino Xavier, a Portuguese consul in Bangkok) and ten foreigners as the Tha Chin Railway Co. Ltd. The railway ran from the Khlong San junction with the river, westwards along the line of Thanon Charoen Rat (all duly and auspiciously opened by Crown Prince Vajiravudh at 9.08 am on 29 December 1904), and incorporated a tramway service.11 A railway was also built northwest from the mouth of Khlong Bangkok Noi as part of the Royal State Railway Department. The story of the tramway system could stand as the story of Western economic colonisation of Siam and of Thai elite (royal) collaboration. The key actor was the Siam Electricity Company Ltd. This was a company of Danish origin in which Danish capital was principally employed. The key figure was Aage Westenholz, who first came to Siam in 1886. He interested himself in a horse tramway in Bangkok; electrification of the system followed, but Westenholz moved on to manage the then existing but ailing Electric Light Company. This thrived under his direction, supplying electricity to the whole city as well as water supply and the fire brigade. The company moved into electric tramways with great financial success and control of four lines: Bankholaem, Samsen, Asadang and Rachawongs, the last two being spurs from the main lines to landings on the river; the Menam Motor Boat Company Ltd had also been set up by Aage Westenholz, in 1906. The Siamese Tramway Company Ltd was ostensibly a Siamese enterprise: Prince Narathip secured a concession for three tramlines in Bangkok in 1903 — the Dusit line, the Hualamphong line and the much shorter City Wall line. The lines were opened on 1 October 1905. A very high government track rent crippled returns on its shares and (consequently?) in 1907 the majority of shares were bought up by the Siam Electricity Company Ltd and the two companies were brought under joint (monopoly) management (Wright and Breakspear, 1908).12 By 1925, Belgian businessmen controlled two-thirds of the Siam Electricity Company with the other third held by the Crown Property Bureau; management was controlled by the Danes. By any standards, this was a significant electrified public transport system. Neglect, ageing of infrastructure and the failure to re-invest, allied with the advice of planners and the automobile lobby to invest in

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Figure 2.7 The Bangkok tramways system: (1) Bangkholaem line; (2) City Circle line; (3) Samsen line; (4) Dusit line; (5) Hualamphong line; (6) Silom line; (7) Yotse line. The three spur lines are also indicated.

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roads for cars, killed the tramway system here as in so many other cities in the 1960s. In December 1951, a number of services ceased and, by 1968, the whole system had gone. The building of the roads, the construction of bridges, the tramways and modern electric light, all allied with the surface of European architecture and the urban design of the city’s few showpieces, could by 1900 convey the appearance of a putatively modern city. Yet with three-quarters of its houses reported to be in “clustered villages along rivers” or on “irrigation canals” (Porphant and Yoshihiro, 2001), with Sampheng described as a fetid slum and “shameless promiscuity and a filthiness without a name” (Buls, 1901, in Van Roy, 2008: 13) and with the greater part of the city effectively unseen, Bangkok’s underbelly was little better than contemporary reports of the more formally colonised and exploited “capitals” of its Southeast Asian neighbours. Only the pretence of self-achieved siwilai marked it as different.

2. Reading the City of the Modern Age The following reading of the “modernised” city will consider three spaces: first, elite space, most powerfully expressed in Thanon Ratchdamnoen; second, the space of the once-emerging middle class in Charoen Krung, now in some senses passed over as the middle class has claimed the wider city. Third will be space variously of those bypassed by modernisation or else only now catching their meagre share. Here, it is the residual khlong-side communities that will be the focus.

Ratchadamnoen While the present attention is on the world of the modernising reigns (Ramas IV, V and VI), any reading of Ratchadamnoen will inevitably confront more recent events and their traces which will surely destabilise the meanings intended by the reforming kings. By the 1930s, the monarchy was discredited and in disarray. On 5 February 1927, seven men had met in Paris and, over the next five days, plotted a revolution in Siam. The intellectual leader of the group was the brilliant law student Pridi Banamyong; it also included military college student Plaek Phibun Songkhram. Others accreted to their ideas and their cause, especially junior military officers from non-royal backgrounds who had notably been educated in Germany. The group became the People’s Party. In 1927, the teaching of economics had been made

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a criminal offence in Siam; as the country was dragged into the abyss of the Great Depression, the royal government floundered; resentment mounted and King Prajadhipok (Rama VII) opined that “the former popularity and credibility of the king is, I think, beyond revival” (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 118). Within three hours of the morning of 14 June 1932, the miniscule People’s Party (of no more than 100 members) captured the government and overthrew the absolutist monarchy. Ratchadamnoen was the public expression of royal absolutism, a processional way between the Grand Palace and the new royal seat of Dusit, intrusive regimentation and aesthetic dominance. Phibun removed Rama V’s mahogany trees on Ratchadamnoen and, in the 1940s, built the Art Deco (fascist) buildings lining Ratchadamnoen Klang, effectively to erase the city of the absolute monarchy: the Royal Way would become the government “district” while the 1939 Constitution (Democracy) Monument would even more directly interrupt the idea of a “way”. Similarly, the 1940–1941 Franco-Thai war would discredit the diplomatic surrender of Rama V to France in 1893 and 1904. As the 1941 Victory Monument commemorated the questionable victory of that conflict, both Democracy and Victory monuments were in part intended to demolish the Rama V reputation. Ironically, the ceremonial way subsequently mutates to become the space of transgression and revolution, also of Thai political ambiguity. Ratchadamnoen became the symbolic path to democracy — it passes from the Royal Grand Palace, emblem of absolutist monarchy, and Wat Mahathat, seat of royalist Buddhism, to the Democracy Monument (a gift to the city from a dictator) and thence to the Parliament, albeit behind the guarding screen of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall. Ratchadamnoen is also the path of protest and resistance, though never fully replacing the importance of Sanam Luang, venue of the 1976 massacre and, more recently, of red-shirt assemblies to counter the yellow-shirt ousting of the successive Thaksin-linked governments. It is more that Ratchadamnoen provides the “space of flows” and the illusion of progress to complement Sanam Luang (Dovey, 2001).13 Thammasat (University of Moral and Political Sciences) is a problematic institution. It was established, in 1934, as Thailand’s second university, mainly at the instigation of the equally controversial Pridi who had been principally instrumental in the bloodless coup of June 1932. Pridi became its first rector. It operated independently of the government by means of fees and interest paid by the Bank of Asia of which the university held 80 per cent of the shares and of which

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Pridi was co-founder. Its purpose was to educate a new kind of critical, informed bureaucrat for the post-absolutist age. In the late 1950s, under American pressure, the military Sarit Thanarat government moved aggressively against leftist elements — the real and suspected communists, Pridi’s family and, significantly, Thammasat students. On 14 October 1973, an uprising had ousted alleged tyrant Prime Minister Thanom Kittikhachon who then went into exile. This was distinguished from previous uprisings in two ways. First, it was popular rather than elitist or military and, significantly, included substantial student participation, notably from Thammasat. Second, it was strongly resisted by the military with massacre as a tactic of resistance. By 1974, Thammasat was an open debating arena for the mounting demands for democracy; the writings of radical social and cultural critic Jit Phumisak (1930– 1966) were republished and proclaimed; traditional historiography was questioned as were the feudal and monarchical bases of Thai society (Reynolds, 1987; Baker and Phongpaichit, 2005: 189).14 On 19 September 1976, Thanom Kittikhachon returned in monk’s robes; he was ordained in Wat Bowon Niwet (Thanon Phrasumen), erstwhile seat of Prince Monkut (later Rama IV) during his long monkhood and still the wat most clearly associated with the palace. He was visited by the King and the Queen. Two students pasting posters to protest Thanom’s return were lynched. A right-wing newspaper accused students of denigrating the Crown Prince over the lynching event and the Royal Thai Army, through its “Armoured Brigade” radio station, called on people to kill Thammasat students, a call subsequently attributed to Deputy Interior Minister Samak Sundaravej. This duly occurred on 6 October: early that day, the military and its auxiliaries, notably the right-wing paramilitary Red Gaur (Red Bull gang) and the royalist Village Scouts, began firing rockets and anti-tank missiles into Thammasat University. Students attempting to escape were lynched, raped or burnt alive. Some 300 were massacred (officially 46), and thousands were arrested. That evening, a coup removed the democratically elected Seni Pramoj government. Books were burnt, publishers harassed and a 12-year non-democracy period was proclaimed (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 194–5). (In February 2008, Thaksin-surrogate Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej declared in press interviews that his role in the massacres had been minimal and that only one person had been massacred, anyway.)15 There are no public memorials to the event of 6 October 1976 although it is commemorated, unpatriotically, within Thammasat’s

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a

b

Figure 2.8 Monuments of Ratchadamnoen: (a) Democracy Monument to celebrate the Phibun dictatorship; (b) 14 October 73 Memorial to legitimise the suppression of 1973 and, by implication, that of 1976.

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campus. Otherwise, it did not occur. There is, however, a monument to the 1973 uprising and massacre: on Ratchadamnoen near the Democracy Monument is a memorial where panels describing the event clearly lay the blame on the unpatriotic students. The Thammasat countermemorials will be visited in this book’s Epilogue to follow the story unfolding in its five chapters. Another event involving Thammasat that did not occur was in May 1992. The appointment of General Suchinda Kraprayoon as military Prime Minister on 7 April 1992 led to mass protests, a general curfew and military occupation of Bangkok. In the events known as “Black May”, hundreds are believed to have died when the military opened fire on unarmed students and demonstrators.16 There are many things that are not to be remembered.

Charoen Krung The point has been made in Chapter 1 that the confusion of Bangkok space (to the foreign eye) is in large measure to be attributed to inconsistent, contradictory, sometimes juxtaposed and sometimes overlain institutions, images and actions. It is as such collisions, juxtapositions, that one can view the curious procession of realms and, at the microscale, of the buildings and detritus of the streetscape of Charoen Krung, its parallel streets and its soi. Though the Chinese port has gone with but few traces, Chinatown persists, distinctively Bangkok, yet assertively different — intricately disordered, teaming, wildly vigorous, brilliantly exuberant. Traces of the old politics persist with the various shrines identifiable with specific groups or angyi of the past. So, for example, the Canton Shrine (Thong Ching Than) on Charoen Krung was founded by a group of Chinese immigrants to Bangkok from Canton (Kwang Chao or Kwong Sio) in the Rama V reign. They formed an informal association called Kwong Sio Pavilion (residence of the Cantonese) in 1877; in 1880, planning to have a shrine built, they sent back to China for the appropriate building materials, columns, tiles, decorations and deities. Today, it houses a group of especially propitious gods. The other distinctive building form from that era was the Chinese shophouse, subsequently proliferating throughout the city — as a property development, Bangkok is a Chinese city, not a Thai, though as a space, it is quintessentially (Sino-)Thai. A most useful and accessible account of Sampheng-Chinatown is that of Edward Van Roy (2007), based on a collection of essays from

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Figure 2.9 Thanon Songwat and other commemorations: (a) graveyard of ancient technologies; and (b) of discarded spirituality.

researchers, lecturers and PhD students of Chulalongkorn and Thammasat Universities. Irritatingly, it lacks references. Van Roy’s account of Chinatown is geographical, proceeding from the Odeon Circle (at its southern or Hualampong station end) northwest to Pahurat. Accordingly, it can be read as inconsistent juxtapositions as suggested here. The Van Roy text on Chinatown can additionally be read against Scot Barmé (2006) on popular culture of the earlier 20th century. Such a parallel reading of texts, alongside the real spaces of Sampheng, can reveal a world of extraordinarily rapid transformation. While Yaowarat and Charoen Krung with their proliferation of Chinese signage, distinctively Chinese businesses and Chinese shrines and clan houses might be the most immediately visible representations of the Chinese presence, the real brilliance of Chinatown is only manifested in its intricate maze of soi and alleys. At its most intense and chaotic, there is Sampheng Market adjoining Pahurat and referred to above. This is superimposed, layered Bangkok space at its most complex (and see Suryadinata and Ang, 2009). Close to the river and paralleling Yaowarat and Charoen Krung is Thanon Songwat, also with its soi and laneways. Here, the market is

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certainly not for the tourists: used engines are stripped down and their components displayed for sale along the road in what seems a graveyard for dead technology. Here, the 19th-century, Chinese-style houses have not yet been replaced; there are auspicious trees, appropriately garlanded and, in turn, providing a graveyard for abandoned shrines and spirit houses. Scot Barmé is notable among the few scholars who have attempted to give a history of everyday Thai life: the past can in part be retrieved from the archives of newspapers, magazines, novels, short stories and cartoons. From that retrieval, he argues, one can conclude that such contemporary issues as class (albeit without the colour-coding of yellow and red shirts), gender, lifestyle changes, tastes, the status and rights of women, popular nationalism and the creeping hybridisation of popular culture — all salient in the present era — are of long lineage. It is in areas such as old Sampheng and Charoen Krung, in some measure bypassed by the development of later decades, that one can detect traces of this past. Old, crammed and undecorated shophouses, old names beneath the peeling paint, surviving family businesses, all give some clues to the city of everyday life that stood against the royal and colonialist city. The world that Barmé explores and that might still be sensed in the detritus of Sampheng and Charoen Krung is the modernising, early 20th-century realm of an emerging middle class. The new affluence and the tastes it supported were, however, narrow and selective. They yielded the sharpest of contrasts between the modernising, new consuming class and those left behind by the new progress. The mounting inequalities have been analysed by Sunate Suwanlaong (2006), drawing in part from Phutsadi (2002, 2003) on the differences in housing conditions. While affluence may have been increasing, so was inequality.

Survival There is another, persisting juxtaposition, namely the city of the modern age, as conceived by Ramas IV and V, against the world that their semimodernisation left behind — the still water-based world of the khlong surviving as threads from the past and still running through the present city. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) could report that, in 2010, one-fifth of the city’s total area was still in agricultural use, mostly growing rice, and that some 13,000 farming households still survive in the city. Most of this activity is at the city’s outskirts, though

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there is still farming along khlong that reach like fingers into more urbanised areas.17 The khlong survive physically though more as remnants than as the hydrologically functioning, ecologically based system of the past; insofar as they retain a function, it is as part of the city’s drainage and flood control, while their various watergates and pumping stations are elements of the hydraulic engineering that has replaced nature. In a few cases, they retain a transportation function, most notably with an eastwest water taxi service along Khlong San Saeb and in the khlong of Thonburi, also along Khlong Phra Khanong in the city’s outer east; in other cases, they are still the focus of local community life, especially in areas of Thonburi and Nonthaburi, and one will still see monks moving along a khlong seeking morning alms. Elsewhere, the khlong may have vanished but its traces persist in the thanon (road) or soi (laneway) that replaced it and it can suddenly re-emerge in heavy rain to swamp the street life that had been ignominiously superimposed upon it. The 2001–2004 project of Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn explored this process of khlong replacement in Bangkok by asking a quite specific question: what has really survived, what is remembered and what forgotten? With no possibility of a longitudinal study of the changes in people’s lives over the century and more of this process, Cuttaleeya observed the lives and sought the perceptions and recollections of people in three “villages” of Bangkok that represent something of a transition (from peasantry to urban bourgeois, from the khlong to the thanon) (Cuttaleeya, 2003, 2005; Cuttaleeya and King, 2007). Although all three areas were observed in the same era, the immediate purpose was to explore what seem to be stages in this progressive transformation: the effect, however, was to raise the question of nostalgia as a surface over the loss of older understandings and of memory, in the sense suggested by Steward (1984) and outlined in Chapter 1.18 The first of the three villages was Ban Bangraonok in Nonthaburi, approximately 11 kilometres northwest of the inner part of Rattanakosin. It comprised a secondary waterway, a wat, waterside dwellings and orchards, displaying the essential characteristics of a typical baan suan rim khlong (house along khlong in orchard) or what Terdsak Tachakitkachorn (2003) has called an “agriculture-based waterside village” of the lower Chao Phraya Delta. It seems that the local Wat Pho-en might have been built in the late 1600s with the surrounding community established at roughly the same time. Its access was by the still-functioning

Figure 2.10 Three sites of khlong-based communities in the Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn study.

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Khlong Bangraonok; however, there is now also Thanon Ban Pho-en dating from the 1990s as the Rama V reforms finally reach remnant-rural Nonthaburi, albeit a century late (Cuttaleeya, 2003). Khlong Bangraonok, though polluted, continues as the backbone of the village, is still used for bathing, for transportation, and remains alive with boats trading household needs, cooked food and local information. It is still effective in defining the community, with households describing boating visits from neighbours, a blurring of familial relationships — “we are not real relatives, but it feels like we are”; “rural people (khon ban-nok) are like this, different from city people (khon krungthep). City people don’t even know their neighbours”. Such reports were, however, tinged with both nostalgia and apprehension — the world as known is seemingly passing away and the emergence of thanon is seen as the cause. From one participant: Road (thanon) has changed our daily life. In the past, we often met each other, as we normally walked here and there, like walking to the orchard. After the road occurred, no people grow orchards any more, and it makes us rarely see each other. We have become separated, seems like to be torn apart. People from the inner khlong and the outer khlong are now using different exits; therefore we don’t often meet (Cuttaleeya and King, 2007: 62–3).

The end of the old regularities and the advent of uncertainty was observable in the landscape of the village, in the form of a greater diversity of fruits, crops and agricultural practices and hence, on all accounts, a greater botanical heterogeneity. Nevertheless, the characteristics of village life may have changed very little, with the presentday functional system still locally understandable. As reportedly in the past and still in the present, land separation could not be identified in the blurred, boundless and undifferentiated space of the village; solid walls were virtually absent, anything approximating to a fence would be transparent and easily passed through, while the elevation of houses above the ground gave continuity to the ground surface. Housing and orchard areas would flow unbordered into each other. Marsh, irrigation channel and khlong similarly flowed together. Nor was there differentiation between physical and spiritual realms: virtually every house had its two spirit houses, a saan phra phum on a single central column (for the spirit who rules over and protects the land itself ) and a saan ta yai or saan chao ti on four shorter columns (for the spirits of ancestors). The spirit houses and the profoundly accorded respect suggest the reality

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of a world understood to subsist beneath the surface of ephemeral, physical space. The second area in Cuttaleeya’s study was Wat Paknam Fang Tai and its surroundings in Thonburi, close by Khlong Bangkok Yai. It would have been peripheral to King Taksin’s Thonburi capital and is today equally peripheral to modern Bangkok: while Wat Paknam Fang Tai is less than four kilometres from inner Rattanakosin, it is like the Nonthaburi village on the “wrong side” of the Chao Phraya and hence largely forgotten by the frenetically eastwards and northwards expanding metropolis. The earliest air photos, from 1932, reveal a village community along Khlong Bangchuaknang around three water-linked wat (with another four nearby but along other waterways). The first notable change comes in 1965 with the emergence of two land-based soi to provide access for a college to the south. By 1975, the photos indicate two distinct settlements developing along the two passages, each constructed with its own internal networks of narrow boardwalks and sub-laneways in canal and road-based settlement respectively. The two communities remained separate until connected by a new roadway, Soi Bangsaothong Police Station, in the early 1970s. The most dramatic change was after 1987, with both communities spreading into their orchard areas and a dramatic increase in building density. By 2001, only two remnant areas of orchard remained. There is a surviving community along the khlong (termed a chumchon) but also two new settlement forms: ti-chad-san (land allotments), with a pattern corresponding to the original orchard blocks, and muban-chad-san (housing estate) of repetitive town houses, named muban Rachaville. Older residents recounted that Khlong Bangsaothong used to be narrower and shallower in the past, easily crossed; hence it was the centre of the community, a space for transportation, social interaction, commerce and recreation. While it remains picturesque, a visiting place for tourists and an alternative transportation route to the river and beyond, its extreme pollution erodes former uses. A sign now proclaims “No fishing — forgiving zone”, perhaps warning of danger, certainly also upholding a basic Buddhist principle of not harming any living creature. Although the prohibition normally applies only to the water frontage to the temple, with fishing occurring beyond this defined realm, the present sign can suggest something more: namely, that the khlong’s most basic function as a resource for food is now compromised.19 Religion is invoked as comforting balm and rationalisation for loss.

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Some older roles may certainly persist. So, from one respondent: I think khlong is still important for people who live along it. Sometimes I still see them use water to bath and do other things. But if you talk about people who live in this area, it might not be like that anymore.

A common complaint was that the khlong had become a rubbish dump as old values and practices had collapsed. Similarly disappearing is the old sense of spatial continuity, albeit differently in different parts. In the surviving village along the khlong, there are now occasional constructed levees to defend against erosion of the banks — the old continuity between land and water will be denied. Elsewhere, property boundaries will now be marked, though more by landmarks than by fences. Observed one participant, “a good neighbour is an even better fence than a real one”. In the older chumchon area, the imposition of fences began fairly recently, along the soi and walkways or next to rented houses to protect against strangers. Here, however, there is a clear preference for flexible and informal types of fencing that still permit a measure of permeability, even if only visual. In the more “modern” housing in ti-chad-san, issues of security and privacy are even more strongly expressed: most residents would be considered middleincome and their houses often targeted by thieves; land value increase is a prized attribute and so one’s land is to be demarcated and defended; the fence becomes a symbol of status and will usually be permanent and opaque. Interaction is inhibited and there can be isolation. Domestic gardens become an object of conscious design (never so in the old communities), meticulously maintained, as if to compensate for a greater loss. Finally, there is the Rachaville housing estate, a gated community, where isolation from the wider community is complete. The intersecting universe of the spirits is also less in evidence than in Nonthaburi: the survey revealed only two-thirds of respondents’ houses with saan phra phum and one-third with saan chao ti. The relative absence of the latter (for the spirits of ancestors) would suggest the lesser degree of spiritual connection and its expression that “modern” people accord to the history of place. It may only be history that is disregarded, however: two sacred trees in the area continue to be venerated (at least by some), with colourful garlands, flowers and offerings and old, discarded spirit houses collected to be placed under their care. The third area studied was Soi On-nut 29 to Soi On-nut 33/1, Suan Luang in Bangkok proper. Although at 15 kilometres it is the furthest of the three areas from Rattanakosin, this is part of the eastern

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expansion of the metropolis in the Sukhumvit corridor and the most urbanised of the three. While Soi On-nut (Soi Sukhumvit 77) was evident in 1952 air photos, as late as 1965, the area was clearly still rural with its buildings clustered along the area’s three khlong. At that time, however, two further roads were constructed running off Soi On-nut, to be named Soi On-nut 29 and 33, giving access to Wat Tonsai but also opening up an extensive area of rice paddy to urban development. Development rapidly lined the various soi as well as the khlong, while the less accessible area remained green. By 1987, more roads had been built, land subdivided, development intensified and thanon-based settlement had virtually submerged the khlong-based. Many participants in the area commented on the end of agriculture. Now, however, memory seems to turn to nostalgia. One sample: Old people were very diligent — they never felt tired; instead they had fun planting trees, working this and that, and chatting among their groups to update news. But nowadays evolution has changed our lives. People are too lazy to do this kind of work. They rather prefer convenience. Only people who really have passion in cultivation will continue to do so … We have no time — we always go out early in the morning and come back late at night.

This is now a society of commuters and of the fragmentation of the individual. The old water world is remembered when khlong water was still usable and people could still swim in Khlong Phra Khanong and Khlong Wat Tonsai. Now the khlong are everywhere rimmed by levees with their concreted pathways and the separation between land and water is sharp and emphatic. The concreted path does, however, provide for an altogether new practice: it is the place for the evening recreational and socialising stroll — a suburban version of the Kudijeen riverbank path observed earlier (Chapter 1). In one sense, the concrete paths replace the old boat-borne visits of previous times and certainly still persisting in Nonthaburi, although they also reduce the khlong or river from community fulcrum to mere spectacle. There are still boats occasionally to be seen on Khlong Phra Khanong, although the two sub-khlong are now no more than part of the Bangkok drainage system: watergates are at every significant junction to block the natural flow, the aquatic network has been destroyed, even though its net-like structure remains as a reminder of a past realm of nature. Space is everywhere fragmented and demarcated. Security and a fear of strangers dictate a world of borders and barriers. Anthropologists

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and sociologists of Thai culture will frequently refer to a “culture of fear” resulting from living in an unpredictable and “high risk society” (Nidhi, 1993; Attachak, 1997). The walls and gates are part of the defence. Participants would constantly complain that, at a larger scale, space is defined in terms of administrative boundaries rather than of familial links. The articulation of profane space with spiritual space is here complicated by the presence of a small Muslim community on part of Khlong Phra Khanong and by the more recent arrival of a Christian component and, for both of these groups, the spiritual realm has no meaning. However, it is really not as simple as that: at a surface level, all groups will participate in the grand celebrations that are essentially Buddhist and Brahman infused. Khlong Phra Khanong, like others, may have become a repository of rubbish and symptom of degradation but, then, there are moments when it bursts into brilliant, almost magical life as it becomes the focus of spiritual beliefs and practices relating to the water and space of the khlong as symbol of prosperity, cleanness, freshness and sacredness. The belief in the goddess of the river (Mae Khongkha) is still paraded and represented through the activities of the annual Loy Krathong ceremony. For “modern” people, the emphasis of this day is on festivities for fun and enjoyment rather than on the old purpose of seeking forgiveness from the spirits — the khlong will be afloat with thousands of little containers with their twinkling lights; however, it is a spectacle that yields yet further rubbish and environmental damage. The irony of a ceremony of expiation for damage done to the ecology that the spirits guard, and in which they inhere, but which itself adds to the damage, seems lost on its participants. The very point of the spirit world is its inseparability from the (ecological) processes of nature — in one sense, they are the same. It is in part the profound Buddhist respect for all life; more deeply, it is the far more ancient animist worldview that has come to inform Theravada Buddhism. The modern consciousness separates the spiritual from the ecological and the realm of the spirits loses its (ecological) depth — it becomes mere surface and religious practice mere ritual. The imagining of the khlong and its life shifts from present experiences to nostalgia and regret. “Meanings” shift from deep symbiosis to mere ritualistic expression — the surface supplants the “real”. (So, is the Thai “episteme of surfaces” merely replacement, analogous with Nora’s observed shift from milieux de mémoire to lieux de mémoire?)

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The spiritual becomes collections of tokens and rituals; borderless space becomes bounded, partitioned, as an individualistic ethos supplants a consensual one — in effect as a capitalist (Protestant?) ethos replaces a Buddhist (although, significantly, the European intrusion into Siam was not Protestant but Catholic; further, Thai capitalism is American, not European). There develops a preoccupation with security, possession, distrust. As noted in Chapter 1, the waterways of early Bangkok were typically dug by semi-slave labour, mostly captured in Siam’s colonising wars. They were then typically permitted to settle along the khlong they had dug, grew their crops and established their communities. The Muslim communities along the significant Khlong San Saeb are still mostly in place, albeit now embedded in the very heart of the city. Other waterways have acquired their linear communities more through squatting and informal occupation — those lining the khlong and drainage channels of the Khlong Toei slums (an issue for Chapter 4) are far more precarious than the long-established, tourist-observed communities of Thonburi or the more prospering locales observed by Cuttaleeya.

The Transformations of Social Space A conclusion from Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn’s work is that modernisation in the form of the suppression of the khlong and the rise of a terrestrial, thanon-based society has been accompanied by the erosion of old forms of community and of a sense of flowing, unbounded communal space. Certainly, other factors were also involved in these transformations, among them rising household mobility, the increasing salience of the nuclear family, rising affluence and the preoccupation with personal possessions and, quite simply, changing attitudes and preferences in part consequent on new media and their promulgated images (the theme of Barmé, 2006). Kasama Bootsita has explored the changes in the construction of Bangkok social space and, in turn, the production of “social capital” and community identity in the context of the sorts of transformations of the city also observed in Cuttaleeya’s study. Social space shrinks with the impact of urbanisation (khlong to thanon) as in the erosion of free-flowing space observed in the work of Cuttaleeya (Kasama, 2003, 2004). Additionally, Kasama observed in more traditional settlements (Thonburi, in the case of her study) the operation of a sophisticated

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“time economy” — the larn wat (temple yard) will change its functions and character with the passage of the day (marketplace, car park, football field, on special occasions a festival ground or an outdoor concert venue) as will the khlong and the walkway. This negotiated time economy and the culture that supports it has migrated into the most frenetic of the city’s urbanised space: it will be observed following in the street markets of Sukhumvit and Silom. The production of social capital, meanwhile, seems to shift to cyberspace, also to be observed in this volume’s Epilogue. The house likewise mutates. The “traditional” house transforms (Wandee Pinijvarasin, 2003, 2004). More significantly, there is the envy of other traditions — the “modern” houses of a Bel Air or Beverly Hills (a “middle-class” formation?). Imitation goes far beyond the envied house of other cultures: the housing estate and the gated community now dominate the vast tracts of Bangkok’s more recent expansion. The transformations can be startlingly rapid: in early 1999, I accompanied Kasama Bootsita on fieldwork in Thanon Silom — Thailand’s “Wall Street” — more specifically in Silom Sois 3, 5 and 7 and their smaller alleys. This is Thailand’s densest development, to rival anything globally. Yet there are still traces to remind the observer that, as recently as the 1950s, this was semi-rural suburbia, of fine villas in extensive gardens. It had gone from urban fringe to absolute city centre in 50 years. Kasama’s work also looked at the production of social space in a typical Bangkok housing estate. There is a regimentation akin to that of the relentless rows of shophouses of earlier decades. However, whereas individual enterprise (or transgression in many cases) succeeded in disordering the order of the shophouse rows, there seems now to be a culture of self-surveillance and self-regulation that fights against such transformation into something closer to traditional Bangkok space. The final imagery of conformity comes with the condominium block.

Baan Man Kong and the Return to Disorder In Bangkhen district, there is a khlong running north-south under various names — Song, Bang Bua, Lumphai, Lad Phrao — and which has over time accreted typically linear khlong-based rural communities lining its banks. For some kilometres north of its crossing by the modern Thanon Phahonyothin, the communities persist on both banks, albeit no longer rural. The western bank settlement is, in the 2000s, in serious decay; houses are subsiding into the khlong and many are abandoned.

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b

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Figure 2.11 Bangkok space: (a) flower market on Thanon Mahathat and (b) Siam Square; then its antithesis in Westernised “order”: (c) Thanon Phetchaburi and (d) Sukhumvit Soi 22.

The eastern side, however, was in 2009 in the middle of a renewal project under the government Baan Man Kong programme to replace informal, dilapidated, very low-income housing with standardised, “modern” concrete houses.20 The disorder of an informal settlement gives way to an almost rigid discipline of identical houses arranged on a formal grid stretched linearly along the regularised khlong, an emulation of the proliferating housing estates. There is additionally a pedestrian (motor cycle) path along the water’s edge so that houses that once adjoined or even overhung the khlong are now separated from it by the concrete walkway. It is the same solution observed in Suan Luang above and, in Chapter 1, along the edge of the Maenam Chao Phraya in Kudijeen.

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Figure 2.12 The return of disorder: appropriation of near-home community space, Khlong Bang Bua community after the Baan Man Kong renewal.

The rigidity, however, here faces challenges. The programme is based on persuasion more than compulsion and some households refused to join. So, in a number of locations, the path simply ends at the wall of the house that refuses to move. Elsewhere, households have joined, obtained their new house, then proceeded to construct an additional structure in the water as an extension of their private space, though separated from the house by the concrete walkway. Other households, whether or not extending into the khlong, have clearly marked their stretch of the walkway as theirs, with plants, furniture, even a temporary shelter. Most of the new houses do not face directly onto the walkway and thereby onto the khlong but, instead, onto the short and narrow, concreted alleys that run off it at right angles. Here too, communal space is personalised with plants and possessions indicating a claim of semi-possession. There is a constant activity of alteration and extension to houses; some households have declined the standardised houses and instead gone for their own designs.

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The outcome of these defiances against order is a seemingly rapid return to the disorder of Bangkok space. The khlong-focused community of Khlong Bang Bua comes to resemble nothing so much as Nonthaburi’s Ban Bangraonok of Cuttaleeya’s study. It is interesting to observe that the condominium blocks sustain no such attacks. On the other hand, the very-low-income flats provided by the National Housing Authority, for example in the attempted upgrading of the Khlong Toei slums, are subject to subsequent disordering (Chapter 4). For the poor, disorder and transgression are a survival tactic; they also become an assertion of identity — perhaps of psychological survival.

Survival and Innovation There are other stories of innovative adaptation to deprivation and poverty. Ukrit Kungsawanich (2001) reports on a case of the Wat Klang community in Lat Phrao Soi 132, in the city’s sprawling east. Trash from the community is collected, mostly by the children, then brought to a “recycling bank” where it is exchanged for cash; the bank, in turn, sorts the garbage into categories initially for delivery to the Bang Kapi recycling centre, a joint venture of five communities with assistance from the Social Investment Fund, then packed and shipped for sale to various processing plants. The recycling bank pays “interest” on deposited trash in the form of stationery and school supplies to the children. The return to the community is a rubbish-free environment. A more recent story is of a recycling bank in the Soi Sahakorn community in suburban Nonthaburi. Initiated from within the local community, this began in 2003 as a somewhat dispirited garbage separation project; then, in 2007, it transformed with the opening of a waste recycling bank with start-up capital raised from residents (Lamphai, 2010). Rubbish is both donated and purchased by the bank, with profits from the recycling enterprise mostly being re-invested in the community. A by-product is a rapidly reducing generation of garbage in the community These would be just two examples among many where local community leaders have devised various approaches to trash management in a city where, for generations, the khlong have been the garbage dumps of choice. The formal sector, however, presents its barriers: Ukrit notes that the recycling plants counter-argue that new raw materials are cheaper than the recycled and accordingly ask for more economical

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volumes or else the price will be lowered. The pressure on the children of Wat Klang was therefore to transform from community recyclers to rubbish scavengers.

A Concluding Note: Successive Understandings of Modernity It is easy to follow the traces of the colonisers from the streets and built fabric of Bangkok; it is easier still to read royal history from the wat, palaces, monuments and grand spaces of Rattanakosin or Ratchadamnoen and, less immediately, from the successive eras of trade written on the landscape of Charoen Krung. It is more difficult, however, to pick up the traces of ordinary life from that earlier era of the elitist invention and imposition of nationalist modernity — Thai historiography has been overwhelmingly royal in focus (Baker, 2006, critiquing Terwiel, 1983). The landscape of Charoen Krung displays the (semi-)colonisation of Bangkok at its most explicit: Chinatown is indisputably “different” (say, from Rattanakosin or from the aquatic world whose replacement it prefaced); Chinatown also presents its own stark differences: while the great conglomerates may still identify with it, Yaowarat also has its informal riverside communities disturbing the city’s image of successful modernity; the European architecture is similarly different from that of both the Thai and the Chinese; the Chinese temples, the gold-domed Sikh Gurdwara and the Catholic churches all attest to difference from the Theravada Buddhism, both popular and elite, of the Thais. That realm of difference, in the Charoen Krung district, presents essentially as juxtapositions in the sense of the distinction between juxtapositions and superimpositions of Bangkok space, introduced in the previous chapter. As a landscape of juxtapositions, Charoen Krung can thus be read as a story of intrusions and of seemingly tolerated confrontations. However, especially when also seen alongside Thanom Ratchadamnoen, a more disturbing reading is possible: we discern the tensions of successive understandings of modernity. Modernity as “Enlightenment” (Rama IV) shifts to modernity as the appropriation of appearance (Rama V), to modernity as inseparable from the idea of “the Nation” (Rama VI and the anti-Chinese turn).21 Arguably, the most significant effect of the Western intrusion relates to that notion of siwilai (civilised) that so preoccupied Ramas IV and V, for this brought with it the need for a new screen across any reality of Siamese society: rigidly hierarchical Siam had to present as egalitarian

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— or at least on the path to social equality (Thongchai, 2000). King Mongkut (Rama IV), in particular, worked to redefine and strengthen the stratification of the society (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 49–50). So the intrusions of Charoen Krung express the conditions that impelled Rama IV towards the pretence of siwilai, a selective Enlightenment, and to the reality of social redefinition.22 There could be no greater contrast than that between the muddle of Charoen Krung, with its serial differences, and the formality and designed order of Ratchadamnoen. The Western-style buildings of Charoen Krung might represent nothing more than the enterprises they housed or the communities they served; Ratchadamnoen, however, is of royal provision, to represent the regime and its imperial (colonising) claim, Bangkok’s grandest exercise in urban design, and a direct appropriation of Western ideas to ensure legitimacy alongside the imperial capitals from which it had borrowed (Paris, Berlin). Rama V was an appropriator and a collector (Peleggi, 2002a). The avenue also served the idea of the royal progress through the city, in part replacing the previous progress along the Chao Phraya river. It also represented vigorous centralisation of the administration — a further Western borrowing in the face of colonial threats. In opening up the new district of Dusit, it could open the possibility of a centralised elite area to stand against the previous, dispersed realms of feudal lords. The next reign, that of Vajiravudh (Rama VI), returns the mind to Chinatown and to the 20th-century infiltration of the Chinese into the construction and ownership of the city. Rama VI’s understanding of modernity arose in the era of revolutions, republics and the rise of the left. He was both an Anglophile and a rabid nationalist: in the wake of the 1911 revolution in China and of a mass strike by the city’s Chinese workers in the previous year, Siam’s Chinese were to be repressed and their sense of identity undermined. Official nationalism would be asserted against any popular nationalist movements (Anderson, 1991). Rama VI, however, was mostly of Chinese ethnicity and so his policies harboured contradictions. It is interesting that the monument to Rama I is on the Rattanakosin riverside, contemplating his capital and in seeming direct tension with that to King Taksin. The monument to Rama V is in Dusit, at the top of Thanon Ratchadamnoen, looking down the avenue as if to contemplate the chaotic events that have ensued there. The Rama VI monument, however, is at the southwest corner of Suan Lumphini (Park), looking into the Chinese and Sino-Thai financial realm of Thanon Silom.

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Rama VI (r.1910–1925) was succeeded by King Prajadhipok (Rama VII, r.1925–1935). It was Rama VII who initiated the monuments to both Taksin and Rama I. By the late 1920s, Siam’s was a discredited, even reviled monarchy. There were new ideas of modernity, already alluded to earlier and to which we now turn.

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Chapter 3

Libidinal Landscapes and the Third Level of Colonisation Sukhumvit

“Sukhumvit Road” is the extension of Thanon Rama I and Thanon Phloenchit, initially into the far southeastern reaches of the city, thence to the cities of the eastern seaboard and beyond almost to the Cambodian border. In the following, “Sukhumvit” will be used rather loosely to refer to the whole eastward highway of Rama I, Phloenchit and Sukhumvit itself. In large measure, Sukhumvit is the armature on which the city grew in the 20th century and presents Bangkok at its most diverse, layered, ambiguous, heterotopic. If one penetrates beneath its surface appearances, it is the landscape from which one is to read Thailand’s compromises and erosions of the 20th century. The third level of colonisation is that of the consuming hordes, when the sphere of consumption appears to assume salience over that of production. While commercial and economic colonisation may be nonstate, it will almost always carry some national identity — English trade, American capital — but the tourists and shoppers will usually exhibit no such implied endorsement from foreign powers. For all that, however, they do colonise the city. The chapter will again be presented in a production-reading sequence. So specifically there is first the production of the city of the 20th century, culminating in the glorious boom of the 1990s and then the catastrophic collapse of both economy and city in 1997. The spaces of that city are variously those of the hedonistic pleasure of shoppers, tourists and lechers, together with the less visible spaces of a population left behind in the rush, but also the legitimising screens across the production of such a city. The reading task is to see through the screens to the violence of the city’s social production and the disaster of its consequences. 87

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1. The Consuming Hordes and the Production of the Libidinal City The five-star hotels, high-rise office towers and condominium blocks, shopping malls and entertainment precincts of Thanon Sukhumvit and similar districts (notably Silom-Sathorn and the riverside) rose on the cheap labour of construction workers, street vendors, street sweepers, prostitutes, tuk-tuk drivers and “the reserve army of the unemployed”. Sukhumvit therefore has its poor obverse in the slums; of these, the most notable is the vast Khlong Toei, to the immediate south of the Sukhumvit precinct. The mirage of Sukhumvit and its imagined opportunities continues to draw population from the underdeveloped Isaan and the north (Bangkok’s erstwhile vassals and colonies), thereby to flood and further depress the slums — the still continuing, first (internal) level of colonisation. Sukhumvit and the slums are mutually constitutive of each other. The increasing spectacle of the city has sharpened the social differences noted in Chapter 2 and, in turn, has ridden on that heightening.

Sukhumvit as Sediments of the Royal The first layer of Sukhumvit’s detritus is largely forgotten. It is the pathway for the Chakri return to Thonburi (Rama I), the regicide and the establishment of the dynasty. There is only one, obscure memorial to this epochal event: near the bridge by which Thanon Rama I crosses Khlong Phadung Krung Kasem (the outer moat), there is a plaque declaring that this bridge was built in 1927 on the order of Rama VII, to replace the earlier wooden Yotse bridge and to be named Kasat Suek bridge, “derived from the former rank of King Rama I when he was Somdet Chao Phraya Maha Kasat Suek and using this route on his way from the war against the Khmers back to the capital”. It is the path to the present dynasty. Part of the rationale for Rama I moving the capital from Thonburi to Rattanakosin related to the potential of the latter’s eastern hinterland for rice and other food production. East-west khlong were developed to provide access to the city and these became the locale for agricultural communities. The most important of the hinterland khlong was Khlong San Saeb, running eastwards from Khlong Ong Ang (the second moat), crossing Khlong Kasem (the third and outer moat), then further eastwards for some ten kilometres to what is today Sukhumvit Soi 71 (Sonsun, 1982: 612; Pumin, 2007b: 290). Then it turns northeast, into

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the further hinterland of proliferating khlong and rice fields of the central plain. The smaller Khlong Bang Kapi was to the south and roughly parallel with San Saeb. Both had been dug in the Rama III period, around 1837 (Archive of Rattanakosin, 1982: 612). While San Saeb was the principal transportation route into the hinterland, there was also the muddy Pak Nam trail running between the two khlong across the Thung (field) Bang Kapi — this was an extension of Thanon Rama I and, in effect, the future Sukhumvit. Rama IV saw this eastern extension of the city as propitious for the founding of new temples and ordered Wat Pathumwanaram (Wat Sraprathum or Wat Sra) to be built on the southern bank of Khlong San Saeb together with a new wang (small palace), the Sraprathum Palace. Construction began in 1853 and was completed in 1857 (PhraMahatavorn, 1991: 82).1 During the summer months, the King would make a boat trip to the palace and to Wat Sraprathum which became the most illustrious temple of the era. Rama IV, it should be noted, was also a diligent property developer, acquiring large land holdings in this new district and adding them to the Privy Purse. Wat Sraprathum (Pathumwanaram) carries traces of both a distant past and the present. In its main hall reside two of the most worshipped Buddhas: Phra Serm and Phra Saan, part of the loot from the destructions of Vientiane, albeit not brought to Sra Sraprathum until 1865 (Phra-Mahatavorn, 1991: 104). Additionally, its murals include the legend of “Sri Thanonchai” written down by Sunthorn Phu from the Rama II period, though older than that: by irony and parody we are shown how Thai politicians explain away their Machiavellian plots and pork-barrel politics by pretext and whitewash. Thai politics may be little changed from Rama II to Rama IX. More recently and controversially, red-shirts fleeing their 19 May 2010 rout sought refuge in the temple compound where they were killed. There was also the Tomnak Keiw (green palace), built in 1913 by Queen Sawang Wattana or Phra Panvasa, grandmother of Rama IX, who lived there in her final years. The Kasemson Palace was on Sois Kasemson 1, 2 and 3, while the Petchboon Palace was located to the east of Wat Sraprathum on the site of what became Central World Plaza (Srisavarintiranusornranee, 2006).2 The Sraprathum Palace also links to the present. On 10 September 1920, Rama VI officiated at the palace for the marriage of Prince Mahidol na Songkla and Miss Sangvan Talapat, or Princess Srinakarindra, subsequently the parents of both Ramas VIII and IX. The palace

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subsequently became the home of Princess Srinakarindra until her death in 1995. Today, it is a residence of Princess Sirindhorn, daughter of Rama IX. The royal real estate acumen has not diminished with the generations, albeit now at a discreet distance. The Tachapaiboon family occupied shophouse properties along Thanon Ratchadamri under Crown Property permit and, in the early 1990s, demolished these to build the World Trade Centre. This was subsequently acquired by the Chirathivat family in 2004 who converted the whole area to become Central World Plaza with offices and hotel. Indeed, the greater part of the district remains Crown Property Bureau land. The Crown Property Bureau (CPB) is a controversial agency, admired as the provider of finances to enable King Bhumibol’s projects and largesse, yet resented in more recent times as rack-renting landlord par excellence. Indeed, in this latter sense, it has inherited the bourgeois resentment towards the monarchy of previous decades highlighted at the end of Chapter 2.3 Its origins are in the Privy Purse that financed the monarchy and its exploits in the absolutist era. It had been reformed in 1890 as part of the overall modernisation of administration of the Rama V reign. Its assets were in three forms: land (including Bangkok’s most valuable commercial land, notably in the Chinatown-Charoen Krung and Sukhumvit corridors), banking (it established the Siam Commercial Bank) and investment in key businesses (sawmilling, tramways, electricity generation, Siam Cement and other industries linked to the expanding commercial economy) (Porphant, 2008).4 By the mid-1920s, the Privy Purse Bureau was heavily in debt, as was the king (Greene, 1999); the latter found himself faltering personally, trying to manage the economy in the face of the global Depression while anti-royalist sentiment rose (Batson, 1984: 92). In 1935, the post-revolution government split the Privy Purse Bureau, establishing the new CPB as a government agency; it was subsequently returned to the palace in 1948 after the first of the royalist-military coups and given a very ambiguous status among Thai conglomerates (Somsak, 2006). The CPB — and the King’s revenue — were very severely affected by the 1997 crisis (Porphant, 2008: 168–9). In the wake of the disaster, the CPB’s property holdings were restructured: a new entity was created (CPB Property Company) and a new commercial and more aggressive stance adopted (Porphant, 2008: 177). Rents were hiked, tenants objected strongly; Chinatown tenants were especially vocal; some government department tenants were evicted. Slum communities on CPB land,

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however, were pursued more circuitously — the political sensitivities were problematic. The outcome, by the late 2000s, was a vast conglomerate of ambiguous status, regarded ambivalently, widely complained of and held in suspicion, yet “good” because it funded and thereby enabled a revered King. The reality, from a diversity of informants, is that the defining characteristic of the CPB has been its incompetence: its land and other resources are poorly managed, its charged rents have been well below market rents, CPB tenants rejoice at being on CPB land but, understandably, react in outrage when their landlord raises their rents.

Sukhumvit and Urban Development Thanon Sukhumvit had emerged as the extension of Thanon Rama I into the expanding eastern hinterland, along the approximate alignment of the old Pak Nam trail paralleling the east-west khlong.5 The area traversed by the Pak Nam trail comprised narrow khlong and drainage channels forming a labyrinth of waterways. These were transport routes, mostly running north to Khlong San Saeb; others ran to the south to Khlong Bang Kapi, thence further south to Khlong Paisingto and Khlong Hualampong, defining the alignment of what is now Thanon Rama IV. While Thanon Sukhumvit and Thanon Rama IV approximately parallel the alignments of the principal khlong, most soi (laneways) in the area are the product of khlong excavation and backfilled ground. On both sides of Phloenchit and Sukhumvit were small khlong and ditches that allowed water to drain away in the rainy season or after tidal water had risen in Khlong San Saeb. Present Sukhumvit residents recall that in the 1950s and early 1960s, remnants of these roadside khlong remained. Khlong Bang Kapi, to the south of Phloenchit and Sukhumvit, retained its semi-rural character of baan suan rim khlong also into the early 1960s. This old world of Sukhumvit came to an end as the khlong became shallower and in the mid-1960s, eventually dried up. Khlong Bang Kapi was subsequently filled and used for road expansion (Pumin, 2007a: 14).6 An aristocratic and middle-class exodus from the crowded capital had already dispersed along the east-west khlong when, with the motoring age, the new Thanon Sukhumvit offered yet greater attractions. Fashion, the desire for the new and easy access to both city and countryside, gave it a status as a locale for noble and merchant estates, though still interspersed with the khlong-focused rice growing and orchardist villages

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so that, by the late 1950s, it could be described in Western terms as middle-class suburbia (see, for example, Bartlett, 1959; Askew, 2002: 240). The old secondary channels feeding into the main khlong alongside Sukhumvit were replaced by narrow soi, while the subdivided rice fields yielded distinctively long, narrow blocks for urban expansion. In 1950, Thanon Sukhumvit was given its present name to honour its head engineer, Phra Pisansukhumvit; it was paved and enlarged to a two-lane highway, for approximately 315 kilometres to Trat province (Prasong, 2004: 334). Charoen Krung similarly suburbanised: in the 1920s, it had become the city’s prime business district, displacing Chinatown, with western stores and medical dispensaries, hotels and later, in the 1950s, a Western-style bungalow area expanding out along Thanons Surawong and Silom. The Surawong-Silom residential precinct resulted from private land sales and development by Thai nobility and Chinese businessmen. Successive waves of new users weaved their way through the Sukhumvit area: the ubiquitous rows of shophouses came to line both it and, increasingly, the intricate maze of its soi. By the late 1950s, Phloenchit-Sukhumvit was beginning to acquire more significant business premises: Khunying (Lady) Manee Sirivorasan (1910–1990) occupied a 10-rai (1.6-hectare) allotment on Phloenchit where she built one of the first tall buildings in Bangkok, the ten-storeyed Maneeya Complex of shops, offices, restaurant and nightclub (Manee Sirivorasan, 1990: 31).7 Thanon Silom similarly began to acquire high-rise offices as the old Charoen Krung business district migrated inland from the river. Bangkok’s grandest hotel had long been the “colonial” Oriental on the Chao Phraya riverbank, at Charoen Krung Soi 38. It acquired a rival in 1957 when the Erawan Hotel opened at the Ratchaprasong intersection, where Thanon Rama I becomes Thanon Phloenchit. Lesser hotels were progressively developed in both the Silom and PhloenchitSukhumvit business districts, as elsewhere in the city. The American R&R programme in the Vietnam War brought an increased and steady stream of “tourists” seeking entertainment venues and, incidentally, accommodation. Notable as “high end” hotels from that era were the Dusit Thani Hotel at the northeast end of Thanon Silom overlooking both Suan Lumphini (Park) and the Rama VI monument, built in 1966 and opened in 1970, and the Siam InterContinental on Thanon Rama I. The Dusit Thani was instigated by Khunying Chanut Piyaoui from a Chinese merchant family although the major shareholder was always the Crown Property Bureau (Porphant and Yoshihiro, 2001); the Siam

Figure 3.1 Rama I, Phloenchit and lower Sukhumvit in context.

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InterContinental, in turn, was on Crown Property land previously part of the Wat Pathumwanaram and Sraprathum Palace compound. Sukhumvit, in particular, became the venue for a range of far less impressive R&R hotels — the Grace on Soi 3, the Park on Soi 7, the Chavalit Mansion (latterly the Ambassador) and the Miami on Soi 13, the Manhattan on Soi 15, among others.

Landscapes of Consumption In a 2006 interview, Udomsri Buranasiri recalled Rama I-PhloenchitSukhumvit as a shophouse strip whose transformation began simultaneously with the Americanisation of consumption in the R&R invasion of the Vietnam War period. Small shops were replaced by bigger shops, then small plazas such a Maneeya Plaza, Gaysorn Plaza, Asoke Market (a venue for Thai-style consumption), and theatres. Roadside restaurants initiated the waves of street vendor stalls, ultimately the beggars and prostitutes.8 The first focus of the “small shops” (as distinct from the roadside strips) was on land owned by Chulalongkorn University. Siam Square, a grid of small streets lined by shophouses and off Thanon Rama I, had its first buildings constructed in 1965 to provide rental income to the university. It thrived in part due to proximity to the university and in part to its coincidence with the R&R boom. In 1987, it acquired the Scala cinema, then the Siam (burnt on 19 May 2010) and the Lido, an early multiplex. The presence of the university made it a focus of private tutor schools; popular restaurants similarly followed. In 1973, Siam Square was joined, on the opposite side of Thanon Rama I, by the large, four-storeyed shopping mall of Siam Centre, developed and managed by Siam Piwat Co. Ltd. It was extended with a parking station (overhanging the Sraprathum Palace) in 1994, renovated after a fire in 1995, and then renovated extensively in 2006 to a theme of “A Magical Glass Box”. The re-imaging had become necessary with the addition, in 1997, of the adjoining, six-storeyed Siam Discovery Centre by the same developer and owner. The effect was for Siam Centre to be styled as the “fashion centre” for teenagers while the Siam Discovery Centre would lure a slightly more sophisticated clientele. The constant re-figuring of Siam Centre has also been necessary because of competition from the rival MBK (Mahboonkrong) Centre, an immense, eight-storeyed shopping mall diagonally opposite Siam Discovery Centre and opposite Siam Square on Thanon Phya Thai. It was planned in the 1980s, again on land owned by Chulalongkorn

Figure 3.2 Rama I, Ploenchit and lower Sukhumvit: BTS, MRT, shopping land and “entertainment” zones. (1) MBK Centre; (2) Siam Discovery Centre; (3) Siam Centre; (4) Paragon; (5) Central World Plaza; (6) Gaysorn Plaza; (7) Amarin Plaza; (8) Phloenchit Centre; (9) Nana Square; (10) Times Square; (11) Robinson department store; and (12) Emporium. Significant areas of bars and entertainment venues are noted.

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University, to be Bangkok’s ritziest venue — hence its grand scale and lots of marble. In a 1983 banking crisis, demand for retail space collapsed just as MBK started selling. Facing bankruptcy, the owners took a quick decision to go downmarket, to sell the space in small units to ordinary vendors and shopkeepers. Hence its warren-like, market feel. When it opened in 1985, it was claimed to be the largest shopping mall in Asia. Its developer was Sirichai Bulakul who named it after his parents, Mah and Boomkrong, whose statues adorned the ground floor; its present owners are Thanachart Bank and the Dusit Thani Group. MBK Centre is always crowded and immensely popular. Compared with the clean, clear layouts of Siam Centre and Siam Discovery Centre, MBK Centre is chaotic and muddled — more like the chaos of Siam Square and the sidewalks. Perhaps more “Thai”. The next expansion of the Siam Square complex was eastwards onto the Crown Property Bureau land previously leased to the Siam InterContinental hotel, demolished in 2002. The Siam Paragon, a joint venture of Siam Piwat and The Mall Group, was designed by the Paris-based J+H Boiffils architecture and interior design practice and opened in December 2005. This attempted to “raise the bar” far beyond the Siam Discovery Centre: the brief was to bring both “culture” and “commerce” together. So as well as seven “anchor” tenants there was Siam Ocean World (claimed to be Southeast Asia’s largest aquarium), the expected multiplex cinemas, IMAX cinema, a venue for live theatre, a section of chic Thai traditional arts and antiques stores — indeed, every device to claim some market pinnacle. This account of the Siam Square area could be seen as a west-toeast progress along Thanon Rama I, from the chaos and shophouses of Siam Square itself and the disorderly MBK Centre, to the somewhat conventional shopping malls of Siam Centre and its linked Siam Discovery, then across a small plaza with water displays and giant video screens to the hype and immensity of Siam Paragon. Next in this line eastwards is Wat Sraprathum, then the next grossly oversized shopping mall, Central World Plaza. Originally called World Trade Centre, the eight-storeyed mall opened in 1990. Its main promoter had been the Tejapaibul family which, however, was badly hit in the 1997 crisis. Accordingly, World Trade Centre had stopped paying rent to the CPB whose newly aggressive practices post-1997 brought that project to collapse. In 2002, the Central Group purchased it from the Wang Pechaboon Group. Anticipating the competition that would come with

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Figure 3.3 Central World Plaza. Shopping malls and their forecourts increasingly assume the role of community focus previously held by the larn wat (temple grounds). In the April–May 2010 uprising, the plaza became the redshirt theatre, with the stage in the immediate foreground facing north — in Thailand, protest and uprising take the form of theatre.

Siam Paragon, the new owners initiated large-scale renovations, expansion and re-badging in 2003, with the new complex officially opened in July 2006. Central World Plaza boasted of being “officially” Southeast Asia’s largest shopping mall (550,000 square metres, against 400,000 for Siam Paragon and 89,000 for MBK Centre). However, in early 2010, it still had unoccupied space as supply clearly outran demand. One effect of Central World Plaza had been to introduce another owner (Central Pattana, of the Central Group) to compete with The Mall Group (Siam Centre, Discovery, Paragon) although it too is on CPB land. In its marketing, it competed by targeting a “middle-class” clientele rather than the wealthy and the tourists sought by Siam Paragon. Like Siam Paragon, Central World Plaza also had its open “plaza”, an expansive area of unshaded pavement separating it from the north-south Thanon

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Ratchadamri and whose events were also more popular than the elaborate staging of Paragon’s. The intersection of Ratchadamri with Rama I is identified as Ratchaprasong. It is the point at which the BTS Silom line Skytrain turns south from Rama I into Ratchadamri, also the location of the BTS Chit Lom station; it is additionally the point where Thanon Rama I changes its name to Phloenchit (on its way, 1,200 metres further on, to becoming Thanon Sukhumvit). Its northwest corner is Central World Plaza; southwest is the Royal Thai Police headquarters; southeast is the Erawan Shrine and, beyond, the Erawan Hotel; then northeast is Gaysorn Plaza. This last is another shopping mall in the west-to-east procession of the landscape of hedonism and consumption. Gaysorn Plaza is small by the standards of its neighbours. It is only 12,600 square metres of retail space on five levels; it is quiet, unfrenetic, uncrowded. It has only the most exclusive of “labels” and accommodates some of Thailand’s most innovative designers. Among Thais, it is frequented only by the most affluent; among the tourists, it is favoured by the expense account-endowed and the Middle Easterners. Here the owners are Gaysorn Group and Hongkong Land Limited. On the continuing easterly walk along Phloenchit (or on the skywalk suspended from the overhead Skytrain), there are yet further malls and five-star hotels. There is Amarin Plaza designed by architect Rangsan Torsuwan, of whom more anon, linked to the Erawan Hotel, as Gaysorn Plaza, opposite it, is linked to the new InterContinental hotel and the Holiday Inn; from there the malls shrink in both scale and market claim, with the relatively miniscule Phloenchit Centre, Nana Square, Times Square. Where the road crosses the old Makkasan-Maenam railway tracks, it changes name from Phloenchit to Sukhumvit. Correspondingly, the world of commerce changes, no vast malls or grand labels but the shophouses (echoes of Siam Square), street stalls, itinerant vendors, and other denizens of the informal economy. It also has its grand (and less grand) hotels, a phrenetic activity of new high-rise condominium blocks in its soi and, seemingly, constant change. This is an economic world of extraordinary intricacy and incomprehensibility to which we will return. At Soi Asoke (Sukhumvit Soi 21, though in its north and south extensions it is named Thanon Ratchadapisek), there was a graveyard of unfinished buildings abandoned after the 1997 collapse of the Thai

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economy. Then, in July 2004, the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) underground rail system commenced regular operation: its most significant interchange was with the BTS Skytrain at the Sukhumvit-Asoke intersection which instantly became Bangkok’s most accessible location. The sudden surge in office space signalled Asoke as the Central Business District rival to Silom’s previous dominance; the office towers, however, were not joined by shopping malls. The next and last shopping mall on lower Sukhumvit is a kilometre further east on Sukhumvit at Soi 24 and opened in 1997. It was developed by The Mall Group who also own Siam Paragon and was designed by the same architects. Like Siam Paragon, its focus is on luxury and high fashion — significantly, Sois 18 to 24 have concentrations of five-star hotels and of Bangkok’s most expensive condominium blocks. The surge in condominium development began with the Condominium Act (1979) which allowed multiple ownership titles for property on a single land allotment; it was then further boosted by 1991 legislation permitting partial foreign ownership of both single condominiums and whole buildings (Askew, 2002: 230).

Sukhumvit and Entertainment In the post-1960 expansion along the Sukhumvit corridor as a zone for tourists, expatriates and the indigenous wealthy, the other demand was for entertainment. The early venue, effectively giving its name to the commercialised sex industry of Bangkok, was Patpong “road”: it is not on Sukhumvit but Silom and it is in the form of two parallel, private laneways connecting Thanons Silom and Surawong. Patpong is named after the family that owns much of the area’s property, Patpongpanit, Chinese immigrants from Hainan Island who purchased the area in 1946. It was then on the outskirts of the city, with a small khlong and a teakwood house. The family built a road, now Patpong 1, and several shophouses; the khlong was subsequently filled and there were more shophouses. By 1968, as the American R&R wave commenced, what had been an ordinary business area had already acquired a few nightclubs and, by the 1970s, Patpong had become the city’s prime nightlife area, notable for sexually explicit shows, go-go bars and a focus for Bangkok’s long pre-existing prostitution (Porphant and Yoshihiro, 2001). New Phetchaburi Road, parallel and to the north of Sukhumvit, had previously been a zone of massage establishments for an indigenous

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market. However, with the American colonisation, this likewise became an “American strip”, with bars, nightclubs, brothels and massage parlours. The more indigenous component tended to migrate northwards to Ratchadapisek, on which more in Chapter 4. Whereas the sex industry was of longevity in Thailand, the garishness was absolutely new (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 149). At Sukhumvit Soi 4 (Soi Nana), Nana Plaza was a small, nondescript shopping mall which, in the 1970s, had included some restaurants. In 1982, several bars on Sois 14 and 16 were forced to close due to new construction. They moved to Nana Plaza and go-go bars began to replace the restaurants, with the Rainbow Group and the Crown Group prominent in their management. Soi Cowboy, connecting Sukhumvit Soi 21 (Asoke) and Soi 23, is named after T.G. “Cowboy” Edwards, a retired American airman who opened one of the first bars there in 1977. A tall African-American, he acquired his name from invariably wearing a cowboy hat. Soi Cowboy looms large in song and film: songs called Soi Cowboy have been featured by American rock group Sin City Girls (1996) and Norwegian group Getaway People; it has been used as a filming venue for Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2003), Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (2004), Bangkok Girl (2005), and Bangkok Dangerous (2006). Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy are also central to the novels of John Burdett, both as research sources and as locations. These are detective stories, usually involving Thailand’s sex industry and Sukhumvit, written around his leuk krung (half-caste), philosophical Thai-Buddhist detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. They are also novels of juxtaposition, of Thai and Western norms and mores just as Nana and Cowboy must also be read as juxtapositions of the contradictory (Burdett, 2003, 2006, 2007). Sukhumvit as an entertainment zone is ephemeral. Cinemas of the R&R era have gone, bars change names, theme and management, and whole venues will suddenly disappear. Thus, in the latter 1990s, Clinton Plaza appeared, with The White House, Hillary Bar and other go-go establishments, between Sois 13 and 15 on what was clearly land awaiting development. It disappeared in 2005 when construction began on a new condominium block. “Soi Zero”, underneath the Chalerm Mahanakhon Expressway, was cleared away around the same time. Collections of bars have arisen on Soi 22, again on underutilised land that will surely acquire hotels or condominium blocks. Most notable of the disappeared venues was “Sukhumvit Square”, of which more below.

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Transformations Ephemerality of Sukhumvit manifests at a larger scale than the mere passing or re-badging of bars. The Americans departed Southeast Asia and Sukhumvit in the 1970s (at least militarily), the tourists diversified and, with the new distribution of spending power that followed the OPEC oil price rises, the western end of lower Sukhumvit became a Middle East focus. The old hotels of the American period are now mostly in decay — the Miami, the Manhattan, the Park … The emblematic establishment of that era was the Grace Hotel on Soi 3; it was purchased by Saudi investors, massively renovated and redirected and now thrives, though mostly for an Islamic Middle-East clientele. Sukhumvit 3 and 5 now present as Islamic, more specifically for Middle-East “sex tourists”. Other hotels will also be favoured, most notably the Ambassador. There had long previously been an Islamic presence in the area — Malay-Muslim war captives from the 19th-century conflicts had settled in the old villages along the main khlong which, for the most part, they had been compelled as slave labour to dig. Their communities are still there: Khlong San Saeb presents a string of Muslim communities. At the other end of the social scale, the Indian-Muslim businessman A.E. Nana (from Chapter 2) had largely been instrumental in the early land speculation and subdivision of the area in the 1920s and 1930s (Brown, 1994: 214–9). There are also East Asian presences. At the northern end of Soi 11 are Korean restaurants and clubs, with even more at Sukhumvit Plaza, a small plaza on Sukhumvit between Sois 10 and 12. Sukhumvit Sois 31 to 39 have a concentration of Japanese, with Soi 33/1 notably displaying a plethora of Japanese outlets (although Korean script is also in evidence); the Japanese and Korean traces also run through the somewhat more upmarket bars, clubs and other establishments of Soi 33.9 Especially after the 1979 Condominium Act, luxury condominium blocks began to be inserted into the soi of Sukhumvit, notably for the expatriate business community; there were the grand (and less grand) international hotels, department stores and shopping malls of a new globalising era. Yet all the time the older waves of users survived, though rice production might be replaced with other “peasant” production and exchange. The area is high-rise and low-rise, simple and sophisticated, rich and poor, traditional and globalised, noble and common, five-star and backpacker, cultural capital (the Siam Society on Soi Asoke) and cultural shame (the professional beggars, the go-go bars of Soi Nana and

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Soi Cowboy, the street prostitutes). While Charoen Krung’s residues of older colonial intrusions give it the sense of antiquity that comes with the layering of architectures of diverse eras, Sukhumvit’s antiquity is left to the imagination; instead there is the dizzying spectacle of constant destruction, rebuilding, re-badging, re-use and new intrusions. Sukhumvit in the 2000s presents the dichotomy of internationalisation — Westernisation versus Islamisation. To some extent, it is a seasonal phenomenon, an attempt to escape both the severe Middle East summer heat and Islamic convention. There is an assertion of (Islamic) identity yet its periodic shedding.

Sukhumvit and the Gale of Creative Destruction The notion of “creative destruction” to enable new investment is, in the economic sphere, attributable to Schumpeter (1950). It is never achieved without violence, invariably on the physical environment (the investments of previous times) and frequently on the society. Sukhumvit is accordingly a violent place. Symptomatic is the story of “Sukhumvit Square”. This used to be a ramshackle collection of bars, shops, a laundry and a travel agency on an area of land at Sukhumvit Soi 10, owned by controversial Thai politician Chuvit Kamolvisit, also occasionally calling himself Davis Kamol. On the night of 26 January 2003, there was a gangland-style demolition of Sukhumvit Square.10 Chuvit was accused of hiring some 600 [sic] men to invade Sukhumvit Square early on a Sunday morning and razing its establishments without notifying its low-rent tenants who had been led to believe that they held valid leases from another company.11 Chuvit was arrested and spent a month in jail. Furious at his treatment by the police, Chuvit named police whom he had bribed over some ten years, putting his total bribes at some 200 million baht (later revised down to closer to 12 million).12 In July 2006, after a trial stretching over three years, Chuvit was acquitted over the Sukhumvit raid although a corporate lawyer was sentenced for hiring members of the Army Corps of Engineers to destroy the businesses. Chuvit (“Davis Kamol”) controls the Davis Group, holding the Davis Hotel and its small “Camp Davis” shopping mall on Soi 24 but, more significantly, six luxurious massage parlours in the Thanon Rachadapisek area (on which more in Chapter 4).13 The police payoffs curtailed a variety of police careers, nor did they enhance Chuvit’s public standing.

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After this debacle, he sold some of his massage parlours, formed his own political party in September 2003, naming it First Thai Nation, and unsuccessfully ran for Bangkok Governor in August 2004. In 2005, he was elected for a four-year term to the House of Representatives, only to be removed in 2006 by the Constitution Court. In October 2008, he again ran for Bangkok Governor as an independent, again unsuccessfully. He admitted that his campaign may have been damaged when he assaulted a journalist who allegedly described him as “unmanly”. The present story returns to the Sukhumvit Square saga. The razing of the bars and other establishments had presumably been to free the large area of its land for new investment. In view of his mounting legal and image problems, Chuvit seems to have seen merit in conjuring up a screen of public benevolence. The area was converted into a public park (though its ownership remained private), to be named Chuvit Garden. There is a tombstone-like stele at its entrance attributing the benevolence of its provision. Less assertive, at the rear of the garden, is the inscription to its dedication: Chuvit Garden Named in honor of Mr Chuvit Komolvisit Dedicated to the Lord Jesus Christ 29th August 2005 to God be the glory

Then, on its western side, a plaque explains the motivation. In part, it declares in Thai and English that: Bangkok has become a large metropolis through economic and cultural development as a result of globalization. This has led to a rapid expansion of the population, infrastructure and other constructions in the city. Our lifestyle has improved but at the same time, our values have changed. Today, our busy lives prevent us from enjoying a life in balance with nature as we used to in the past. It is, therefore, Mr. Chuvit Komolvisit’s dream to bring serenity back to our lives through the endowment of Chuvit Garden … Through the vision and dedication of Mr. Komolvisit, this sanctuary is endowed to the city for all to enjoy regardless of nationality or religion at no expense. It is his belief that money and wealth cannot be carried on to the next life. The only thing that can be passed on to the next generation is the selfless bequest one can offer to the society.

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Also on its western side, Chuvit has had a very elegant, traditional Thai house built (albeit hybridised with a “modern”, Western-style form and modern convenience), again with an uplifting plaque declaring its purpose as a demonstration of the real traditions of the society and of noble intentions: “with great pleasure, Khun Chuvit recreated Baan Davis — this stunning form of art for all to enjoy. He hopes that the beauty of the establishment would capture your imagination and lead you back in time to the golden days of old Siam”.14 One emerges from Chuvit Garden convinced (as one is intended to be) of the goodness of Chuvit Komolvisit. The donors of Thonburi mosques and wat in earlier times were no doubt similarly motivated. Sukhumvit’s only other area of green space is Benjasiri Park between Sois 22 and 24 and adjoining the Emporium shopping complex. It is dedicated to Queen Sirikit. On 29 rai previously occupied by the Meteorological Department, it was constructed in 1990 to commemorate the Queen’s 60th birthday in 1992. Thai cities are characterised by an absence of public open space. King Rama VI’s English experience may have partly accounted for his largesse in granting Lumphini Park; it, however, was the great exception. In traditional communities, public events would be permitted on the larn wat (the grounds of the local temple) and such uses continue. Public open space was mostly linked to religion. It is a role that now, it seems, has been assumed by the shopping mall and its forecourt.

2. Reading the Libidinal City Like other great urban streets of Thailand, Sukhumvit can be approached through the sort of epistemic lens suggested earlier, where there are surface appearances but no material reality. The spiritual realm is presented as a screen — a surface of shrines, spirit houses and spatial practices of respect and reverence, over the face of continually modified shophouses, office towers, condominiums and numerous establishments of questionable function; then there is the further legitimating screen of periodic royal celebration; then, at the Ploenchit (western) end of the strip, yet another surface of somewhat conventional though disjointed displays of urban design. However, it is what lies behind the screens that presents the dilemma of Thai space.

Sukhumvit and Sub-Cultures Behind the screens of the shrines, royal portraits, flags and displays of corporate wealth — though scarcely masked by them — are the very

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poor. No discussion of Sukhumvit’s denizens is adequate without consideration of its sub-cultures. Sukhumvit has Bangkok’s greatest concencentration of high-income residents. However, the neighbouring Khlong Toei slum is Bangkok’s largest, also arguably its poorest (Worawan, 1998: 13). It and other slums, both surrounding and interstitial within the Sukhumvit zone, are also a principal source of Sukhumvit’s low-wage (and no-wage) labour (Chapter 4). Thanon Sukhumvit in its most phrenetic reaches from around Soi 3 (Nana) to Soi 21 (Asoke) is a contested pedestrian space — stalls occupy both sides of the sidewalk so there is about a metre for the jostling crowds. One inches along the walkway in an always slow progress; to cross from the totally chaotic north side to the less crowded south side — across the either clogged and immobile or else homicidally rocketing traffic — can only be accomplished via the road’s few footbridges. The competing stalls, ever advancing into the pedestrian space, the steep stairs to the footbridges, the only slightly less chaotic soi that branch off from the road itself, constitute the geography of what is commonly known as “lower” Sukhumvit. The scurrying business people, the tourists, vendors, prostitutes and beggars make up its society. At Soi 7 is an especially crowded intersection. There will occasionally be a few ladies sitting on the kerb in some state of hope, also always the tuk-tuk (motorised rickshaw) drivers with photographs of other ladies to whom they offer to transport the tourist. Also, however, will be very small ladies in jeans and t-shirts but then adorned with the head-dress of Mon, Karen or other hill-tribe people, to sell their tiny trinkets. They are well below the stall vendors in any socioeconomic hierarchy. They gather around the escalator to the BTS skytrain; I have never seen them complete a sale. Further east, at the next entrance to the Nana BTS station (via a very long flight of steps), there are no beggars, nor at the next BTS stairs at Soi 11 — simply, there is no space for the beggars as the vendors of pornographic DVDs have totally appropriated the few square metres available. The beggars’ next site is nearer Soi 13, opposite Chuvit Garden, where there is an older pedestrian bridge: two have staked out its stained concrete and broken tiles although a third sometimes claims the landing on the stairs. They have small children, with paper cups to collect the few baht that might be offered. There is another footbridge near Soi 15; here the beggars are less constant. On the south side, there is a small space under one of the stairs up to Nana BTS station, too small for a stall but possible for a beggar.

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Two conventionally occupy it, about two metres apart. They have tiny, underfed babies. Amputee beggars occupy the pavement, endeavouring to obstruct the passage of the pedestrians to entice their generosity. There is social differentiation within the begging profession — apposite is a comment from Father Joe Maier (of whom more in Chapter 4): She was a leper and she was begging by the side of the road. She goes begging when she is short of cash, and as this was the beginning of a new school term, and everyone in Thailand was broke, she came out to earn some money for school supplies for her grandson. I asked her why I did not see many people with AIDS begging, and she said, “They got no staying power. They are not like us lepers who are really in the business and know how to do these things” (Murray, n.d.).

Another particular fraction is the blind beggars. They are almost invariably musical, chanting to a recorded background of usually indigenous instruments and guided along the pavement by a sighted companion. Then there are the elephant beggars: Gui mahouts from Isaan will bring their elephants to Bangkok to beg, mostly along lower Sukhumvit and in Soi 4 and Soi Cowboy. The mode of begging is for the mahout to sell food for the tourist to give to the elephant.15 There are periodic campaigns from the city authorities to drive the elephant beggars from the city. As the beggars cannot afford the requisite bribes, they are compelled to disappear. The affluent, gold-chained Indian and Middle-East tourists seem to manage this confrontation with the proliferating beggars. Their own societies also have unhidden poverty and highly visible beggars. The Westerners are more confronted. Their relief is in the sudden realisation, as they confront the leper with his amputated limbs on the north side or the plethora of amputees on the south, that the beggars are not found on other stretches of Sukhumvit, nor on Phloenchit, Rama I, the soi (except Sukhumvit 11), Silom, Surawong, etc. Sukhumvit, between Sois 3 and 21 on the north side (4 and 16 on the south), is Beggar Central. There is a sense of a begging industry to be observed here. As I visit Bangkok several times each year, I observe that some of the lady beggars with very small babies seem to have a steady supply of such babies; there is also an obvious regulation of the begging locales — no intruders on specific begging locales. One hears murmurs that the gangs are in on the trade and some of the beggars are indeed “owned”. Let there be no misconception: there is a vast underclass of the poor in Thailand; begging is linked to the quest by the more

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affluent for Buddhist merit and the beggars, like the monks with their bowls for receiving alms, supply a need. There is certainly extreme poverty and its concentration on this limited stretch of Sukhumvit has the effect of deconstructing something of the screens that constitute the visible city — the Nation as degraded erodes the myth of its glory, the merit-making as panacea for neglect and indifference erodes the displays of Religion. Across the 24 hours of the day, there is an intricate time economy that is also characteristic of many other areas of Bangkok, as one succession of street stalls packs up to be replaced by others — tourist trash will suddenly be transformed into food stalls, then perhaps cheap clothing, then perhaps trash again. It is a landscape of intricately intersecting, contradictory yet mutually accommodating and constantly proliferating modes of production, exchange and consumption (King, 2004). While the amulet markets of Rattanakosin are not replicated on Sukhumvit or its soi, around midnight the pavement between Sois 15 and 17 will transform as the fortune-tellers take their turn. There will be little lights and candles, some will use cards, and the customers abound. The tourists might pass by as this is not for them. It is another manifestation of the complexity and ambiguity of Thai systems of belief. By that hour, the beggars and the making of merit will have gone. Controlled or uncontrolled? The passerby seems to observe the vigour and ingenuity of an informal economic sector of stallholders, the more transient vendors, the beggars and prostitutes and the “informalisation of the formal” observed in the previous chapter in the story of Khlong Bang Bua. Anecdotes abound, however, that this is all indeed controlled: the insinuators into the lucrative space of lower Sukhumvit “enjoy” the “protection” of both the police and gangs. The informal economy is as hierarchically ordered as the formal.

The Reproduction of Culture To discern something of what might be at stake in the artificial though quintessentially Thai world of Sukhumivt, one can turn to an unlikely parallel. Until the decline of the khlong and their communities, the floating markets were the places of everyday exchange and communication. By the 1950s, they had effectively vanished. Then, in 1987, the Taling Chan floating market was set up on Khlong Chak Phra as a weekend market, principally for the tourist trade. Also in the Taling Chan district is the Khlong Lad Mayom floating market established in

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2006 by farmer Chuen Choochan. There is additionally Wat Saphan floating market on Khlong Bang Noi, established purely for tourists (Ussanee, 2003; Vipasai, 2009). These are essentially modern inventions — re-imaginings of an earlier culture and of an aquatic Bangkok. The Taling Chan floating market, for example, started with five bamboo rafts, later upgraded to 11 metal pontoons; it is essentially a series of restaurants where one can eat, shop and relax alongside the khlong, all accessed for the most part by car or tourist bus. The floating markets are reproductions — fakes. Yet, for all that, they are popular with Thai as well as foreign visitors and serve the legitimate function of presenting traces of a past culture and simultaneously establishing a present Thai identity and sense of difference. While they may suggest the obliteration of old culture and ways of life, they also powerfully represent the ability of older ways to mutate with new communication, attitudes and technologies. The street markets of Sukhumvit and Silom are of the same genre. These are modern survivals of much older practices of small-scale, informal commerce and trade; their disorder is also an expression of the daily struggle of the poor to survive against the drive of elites and authorities to mould the built environment according to their own imaginings of good order and the proper representation of social hierarchies. It is the same disordering principle observed above in relation to the Khlong Bang Bua reconstruction, revealing both resistance and transgression. Though modern, the street markets express the constant metamorphosis of culture and its role in constantly redefining a society and its identity. Sukhumvit continually redefines Bangkok.

Reading beneath the Screens In a series of papers in SOJOURN, referred to previously (Chapter 1), Peter Jackson has written of a “Thai regime of images”, drawing attention to a range of modern scholars who have identified a Thai preoccupation with surface appearances but a disinterest in the private domain of life. So Rosalind Morris has written on a Thai “order of appearances”, the “love of the disciplined surface”, an “over-investment in appearances” (Morris, 2002). Those ancient surfaces were progressively called into question in the 20th century — in the 1932 ending of absolute monarchy, the consequent eclipse of the monarchical system and the rise of an absolutist military, the compromises of the Second World War, then the Vietnam War and the Americanisation (neo-colonisation) of Thailand.

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Figure 3.4 Sukhumvit as muddle: (a) street market; (b) signscape on Soi 11.

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While the function of the screens is to construct imagined realms of Nation, King and Religion and hence are abstractly ideological, they are also materially physical. They are built up with real things — flags, banners, royal portraits, shrines, emblems, monuments. There are layers upon layers, augmenting the visual complexity of the urban landscape and the ambiguity of Nation, King and Religion.

The Nation as Screen across the Violent So far I did not see any true nationalistic politician … It was only a surface nationalistic idea combined with corruption (Boonluarh Tepayasuwan, in Praoprat, 1985: 255; Pumin, 2007a: 71).

The violent history of militarist Siam did not end with the late 19thcentury imagining of the nation and the tentative stabilisation of the national borders in the early 20th century. The 1932 ending of monarchical absolutism may have been bloodless as alleged and civilian directed (with socialist Pridi Banomyong as its “champion”). However, the balance very soon shifted from Pridi to General Phibun Songkhram and the effect of the coup was to deliver military dictatorship. The post-Second World War defences of the national integrity, in turn, proceeded through a seemingly endless procession of military coups, often savagely violent. The myth of the military becomes a metaphor for the Nation — the military is guardian of the Nation and the Nation’s role is to enable the glorious military. In recent times, there has been the Islamist insurrection in the south, albeit with its seeds sown in the 1909 annexation and in suppressions a century before that. There has also been more recent military violence against Rohingya refugees from Burma. As the Rohingyas are also Muslims, these episodes can similarly be popularly interpreted as the military (the Nation) against Muslims (Head, 2009; McCargo, 2009). On the Cambodian border, there has been the dispute and military posturing over the Preah Vihear temple, as a reminder that Thailand’s borders are not only unstable but also disputed. This last highlights the ongoing fracturing of the Nation: on 19 September 2009, a (middle-class, yellow-shirt) PAD rally “for sovereignty” was mounted at the Cambodian border. This, however, was in red-shirt (pro-Thaksin) territory; the “patriotic” PAD was opposed, violently, by the local villagers (King-Oua Laohong, 2009). The military is caught up in the definition of the Nation both geographically and religiously.

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Figure 3.5 Screens of The Nation: (a) flags and bunting, of both The Nation and The King, on the walls of the Government House complex, locale of protest and uprising; (b) election time on Sukhumvit and the illusion of democracy.

One element of Thaksin’s fall — at the hands of the military — had been his favouring of the police over the military. The rivalry between the two is of long genealogy; especially in the second Phibun dictatorship, the junta was torn apart by the competing forces of police and army. Thaksin’s own background had been in the police and his subsequent alienation of the army fed the resentment and animosity that eventually exploded in the 2006 coup. Both army and police compete in their demonstrations of royal loyalty. However, the King’s more frequent donning of army uniforms signifies the political power of the screens.

The Royal as Screen across the Political The King’s relationship with the military is ambiguous — distant, yet King, Queen and Crown Prince will grace military uniform for the great moments of state. The King’s Birthday Address, traditionally on the eve of the 5 December anniversary, before the assembled elite and the nation’s most solemn moment, is to the military. The King also stands aloof from the contestations of the political sphere, even while all politicians protest that they act in the King’s

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Figure 3.6 The royal screen: ubiquitous (though intermittently displayed) images of King and Queen veil commerce, government and military; they merge ambiguously with the simultaneously overlaying surface of the spiritual: (a and b) Thanon Phra Sumen, Bowon Niwet; (c) Khlong Toei slums; and (d) Ratchadapisek “entertainment” zone.

name. The 2008 conflict between the PAD and the UDD (the yellowshirts and the red-shirts) played out against the ubiquitous images of the King. The King is transcendent, above all criticism and conflict. Royal portraits are ubiquitous in Bangkok, the screen beyond which the base plottings of the military and the venality of the politicians are played out. By the late 2000s, however, the royal transcendence was taking some hits. Republicanism was openly discussed, even in the royalist media; the Internet had become a vehicle for critical discussion of the monarchy’s role and charges of lèse majesté were proliferating.

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The dilemma of the lèse majesté laws is that anyone can bring a charge against anyone else. So the King is used as a device to silence one’s critics.

Religion as Surface across the Criminal The surface of the Royal tends to blur somewhat with that of the Religion. There are first the wat, the most important of which are “Royal” and many of which are intimately tied in with the legitimacy of the dynasty (Wat Arun, Wat Phra Kaeo, Wat Pathumwanaram, Wat Bowon Niwet). Then there are the shrines, where a Buddhist-Brahman ambiguity is nearly always in evidence, also with animist undertones. Special significance attaches to the Erawan Shrine, focus of the Ratchaprasong intersection, built in 1957 at the same time as the Erawan Hotel and renovated several times since including in 1988 when, along with the hotel, it was rebuilt to a design from Rangsan Torsuwan (of whom a lot more below). The shrine is to the Hindu Brahma, sacred among the Hindu community, and the Brahma of the Erawan is held in highest awe and the site as most holy. In the Brahma tradition, there are three gods directly responsible, collectively known as the Tri Mulati: Vishnu, Siva and Brahma. It is Brahma who is the creator of all things; he is the Sauampoo, meaning the one who originates himself; he possesses the highest moral principles, exhibiting kindness, mercy, sympathy and impartiality. These four precepts constitute the “conscientious behaviour” which corresponds with Buddhist teachings. In Hinduism, there are multiple, innumerable universes, every one of which has its own Brahma; in Buddhist tradition, the rivalry between Brahmas of these many worlds was corrected by the Buddha. Vishnu, Siva and Brahma are represented in the Erawan Shrine. It is one of the most revered of the city’s places, always crowded by its Buddhist devotees. Other shrines in the area are nowhere near as popular, failing to attract both the local and overseas followers,16 nor do they encourage the great line of sidewalk stalls selling garlands and other devotional items that gather at the Erawan Shrine, making it both a centre of economic activity and one of Bangkok’s most remarkable sightseeing experiences. As elsewhere on Phloenchit-Sukhumvit, there is a vendor-managed time economy: the width of the sidewalk is about four metres and the vending area runs for some 46 metres, half of which is allocated for garland vendor stalls. There is space for 25 stalls but they rarely manage more than 15 at a time, where vendors democratically take turns, by means of a monthly lottery, for the best

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locations. Jeh Noy, a second-generation street vendor whose family had occupied the space since 1957, oversees trading conduct and serves as a role model for her peers.17 Early on the morning of 22 March 2006, a mentally ill young man desecrated the shrine, smashing the golden image. He was pursued by outraged onlookers, caught and murdered. The murderers — selfappointed judge, jury and executioner — received no punishment and walked free while the local media reported that most local people saw no fault in the public execution of a useless man (Pumin, 2007a: 93, 2007b: 293–4). With great care, the shrine was restored. Diagonally opposite the Erewan Shrine, on the CPB land leased to Central World Plaza stood the Tri Mulati Shrine, also honouring the three deities. It was dedicated in 1995, was very popular with the young but was removed in 2005 to make way for property development. For that desecration, however, no one was chased and murdered. Other shrines along Phloenchit-Sukhumvit also attest to the syncretic power of Thai Theravada Buddhism. Syncretism, however, fails to extend to the Islamic as Thai Islam’s Malay sources are manifested in its defensive borders. Another layer or surface of the spiritual realm is that of the spirit houses. Beyond them will be yet a further layer of the small private shrines and garlands, in the house or even the “entertainment” venue, on a tuk-tuk or a boat. As yet a further layer, amulets will protect the human body. In a Thai episteme, there is always the problem of “the real”. This world is ephemeral; like the cities we build and the wealth we accumulate, we will pass away. The world of the spirits, however, is forever. There is a spiritual landscape — the spirits who inhabit the land, auspicious trees, the graveyards of old shrines and spirit houses beneath special trees, auspicious plants in pots as a sort of mobile spiritual landscape. In many places, this becomes potently present, never more so than in the khlong-side communities — baan suan rim khlong. Because the spirit world is real and all the rest merely ephemeral, the “revealing veil” of this world banishes that of human greed and venality, criminality, property development and pollution. Thus venalities, because they are “unreal”, can thereby be ignored — to the great comfort of property capital. Whereas the surface of the Royal is rigorously maintained and respected, and likewise though more ambivalently that of the spirits, it is necessary to distinguish between the spirit world and that of Religion. The Religion as screen has progressively shattered and is commonly

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Figure 3.7 Brahman-Buddhist shrines of Phloenchit-Sikhumvit: (a) the Erawan Shrine; (b) shrine adjoining Amarin Plaza; (c and d) at Central World Plaza.

assailed — the media abound with stories of corrupt abbots, paedophile monks and the commercialisation of Buddhism, while the monkhood attracts fewer and fewer ordinands.

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Figure 3.8 Screens of the spiritual: (a) at Chuvit Garden; (b) modernist expression at Sukhumvit Soi 6; (c) and (d) at Poseidon and Emmanuelle (brothels).

The Surfaces of Consumption The Sukhumvit landscape of consumption presents as spatially intersecting layers: malls of varying levels of grandeur and hotels similarly differentiated; formal businesses occupying the 1970s–1980s shophouse rows and extending into the soi; the stalls, street and sidewalk vendors with their time economy; the private compounds, upper levels of the shophouses, informal settlements along Khlong San Saeb; BTS, limos, taxis, tuk-tuk, motor-cycle taxis; seemingly every nation represented yet also the internal refugees from Isaan and the North. These intersecting layers are not “surfaces” in the sense of those of Nation, the Royal and the Religion (the legitimating triad). Yet they

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Figure 3.9 Sukhumvit street market: the calm of Soi 4.

do function similarly, in confusing any idea of reality — the venality of the corporate is hidden behind the façade of an informal, picturesque street culture. The muddle of Bangkok space renders exploitation, appropriation and control opaque. Control, in particular, is hidden behind the semblance of no control, as the brutality of the city’s production is hidden behind the seductive screens of its consumption. There is a curious effect of the frequently multiple overlays of individual makeovers to otherwise identical shophouses, commercial signage and advertising paraphernalia: the boundaries between individual premises become blurred as the surfaces of consumption disguise legal, material ownership. The borderless, flowing character of Thai indigenous space, commented upon previously in relation to the Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn study, is restored in the surface appearance of the street.

Gender Ambiguities To the ubiquitous, unreflective sex tourist, the most startling screen of all must relate to gender ambiguity — how is one to distinguish a

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Figure 3.10 Undifferentiated space migrates from the indigenous to the commercial: this example is not Sukhumvit but the backpacker realm of Thanon Khaosan (Rattanakosin, between the first and second moats).

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kathoey from a “real” woman? Thailand is not the only society where both culture and language accept the existence of a “third gender”, neither male nor female. The uniqueness here, however, relates to a distinctive history of sex-gender relations, culturally embedded sexual practices and the modern commercialisation of sex. The most insightful research into the genealogy of sex-gender relations and their politics in Thailand has been from Peter Jackson, variously reported in Jackson (1995, 2003a, 2004c), Jackson and Cook (1999), and Jackson and Sullivan (1999). A dramatic increase is observed since the mid-1960s in the range of gender-sex identity categories in Thailand: “new male and female same-sex [gay king, gay queen, tom, dee], male bisexual [seua bai ] and male-to-female transgender/transsexual [kathoey] categories emerged in public discourse and formed the basis of new homosexual and transgender identities and cultures in Bangkok” (Jackson, 2003a;18 Sinnott, 2004). Michel Foucault had argued, on the basis of the genealogy of Western (mainly French) socio-political institutions, that the selfperpetuating operation of power in modernity extended to “bio-power” — power over the human body, exercised through religious, legal, medical and psychiatric projects, for example to “cure” the “illness” of same-sex desire. Homosexuality accordingly had to be defined so that it could be proscribed, its definition and proscription thereby producing it as a (sub)culture (Foucault, 1980). Jackson, however, confronts a paradox: in Thailand, there has been no historical movement for state control of the body or the mind — the restrictions, rather, have related to the imperative to maintain certain surface appearances — screens and masks.19 Further, in Buddhism, homosexuality is not a sin. Insofar as there have been legal restrictions on sexual behaviour, Jackson argues, they were initially in response to the perceived need for Thailand to appear to conform with the restrictions of the (Western) colonising powers and thereby with the image of their modernity. So, for instance, the Rama V government in the early 1900s introduced a prohibition against sodomy into the penal code; however, it was never acted upon. Only much later, after the virtual explosion of sex-gender diversity as spectacle from the mid-1960s, did a sensationalising popular media massively augment the spectacle and initiate alternately prurient and censorial discourse. Hence the paradox: [There] appeared to be a proliferation of sexual identities in the absence of a domestic regime of power over sexuality that might have incited these

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new forms of subjectivity into being. The type of cultural outcome that Foucault sought to understand had come into being in Thailand in the absence of the forces that he identified as having brought it into existence in Western Europe (Jackson, 2003a).

Jackson’s suggested answer to the paradox is in part to be found in a cultural predominance of gender (relating to socio-cultural roles) over sexuality in defining Thai identities. He cites three main Western critiques of Siamese (gender) barbarism and lack of civilisation: (1) the “nakedness” of the body; (2) the “excesses” of polygamy and of temporary marriages; and (3) the similarity in the appearances of Siamese men and women, accentuated in a lack of differentiation in fashions and hairstyles. Siam’s was a nude, libertine, androgynous society. The “universal androgyny of the Siamese” especially outraged Westerners in the 19th century; Jackson quotes Penny Edwards to the effect that, in Western Europe, the Industrial Revolution initiated a divide between male and female roles; the body became the site on which “female cultural ideals” were manufactured through new processes of mass production (Edwards, 2001: 391). The lack of gender differentiation in Thailand, by contrast, was still being reported in the late 1940s (Sharp et al., 1953: 87–8). Attempts at countering these perceptions of an “uncivilised” Siam began in the Rama IV reign and were brought to full intensity in the modernising project of Rama V. The tactic took the form of a bifurcation of social life into a public realm, where some selected forms of (Western) decorum would reign, and a private realm to which eroticism would be relegated. Into that private world, there would be no state intrusion. The public sphere would be a screen across the “real” world of human desire, diversity and eroticism. For the benefit of that public screen, there was the anti-sodomy law referred to above (never implemented), an official ban on polygamy in the 1930s (never really observed), while multiple marriages would today imply multiple households rather than a single, multi-wife household as in the past. Jackson (2003a) quotes Rosalind Morris: By the traditional Thai logic of visibility and invisibility … virtually any act is acceptable if it neither injures another person nor offends others through inappropriate self-disclosure. As one of the country’s more prominent kathoeys remarks about being gay in Thailand, “There is no problem … provided you don’t ripple the surface calm” (Morris, 1994: 32).

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While Jackson tends to attribute the invention of visible gender differentiation to Ramas IV and V, in their respective strategies to project “civilisation” in face of colonialist accusations of the contrary, he links its more modern enforcement to the fascist regime of Phibun Songkhram and his somewhat sinister understanding (and imposition) of “culture” (watthanatham). While there might be mimicry of Western representation of genders, this was for the nationalist purpose of resisting Western intrusion (albeit via Japan). There would henceforth be men and women and no unisex fashions. So, whence the kathoeys ? Jackson reports the first media accounts of cross-dressing from the 1920s; there had also been a tradition of same-sex theatre where, in the theatre of the inner court, women would take both male and female roles, with all-male troupes taking both roles in the “outside” theatre of the wider populace. However, it was only in the post-Second World War era that cross-dressing and cross-gender issues assumed salience, in the context of the enforced gendering of male and female. When in the 1960s and 1970s, the sensationalising media brought “new” gay, tom, dee and kathoey identities to public attention, there were only weak and ineffectual moves towards suppression and control.20 The media also were strongly instrumental in the definition and fetishisation of (feminine) beauty, which played upon the Thai aesthetic preoccupation with appearance and performance to yield the seemingly endless sequence of beauty pageants (female, transvestite, kathoey), by one estimate nine per week (CornwelSmith, 2004), the cross-dressing and kathoey cabarets, the extraordinary diversity of gendered bars and the late-night parades of the diversely gendered (ambiguous, indeterminate to the observer), most notably on Sukhumvit Soi 4 (Nana) but at smaller scale in the hotel disco bars. The beauty pageants are of a kind with yet another screen across the city: the advertisements that permeate through the public transport, as well as the highway advertising boards, are overwhelmingly for glamour products. There are fiercely contested advertising campaigns for the city’s private hospitals as they compete for the plastic surgery tourists. The medical industry, like much else, portrays itself as being preoccupied with appearance (surface) and glamour, albeit also racist in the advocacy of “Western” appearance (Aizura, 2009). The production of gender diversity and its attendant ambiguity has been an urban phenomenon, played out in urban space. Rama IV’s prescriptions on the presentation of the body related to public display in the court and the wider space of the city; the embrace of male and

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female Western representation by Rama V was doubly urban — a product of the king’s (Western-urban) cultural kleptomania and mobilised essentially for urban display; the more recent gendered displays have also been overwhelmingly in urban space. In the present day, it is mostly a story about Bangkok and its entertainment satellite Pattaya, less so Hua Hin or Phuket (also urban). The readers of the streets of Bangkok will be confronted by the confusions of gender ambiguity. However, what they are seeing is urban. What is masked by both the ambiguity of appearances and the grosser displays of the commercialised sex scene is that other world of the poor countryside and the depressed Isaan and the suppressed minorities from whence the dancers and prostitutes have mostly come. The prancing kathoeys on Sukhumvit Soi 4 and the indeterminate dancers in the bars are, further, a palimpsest on which might still be deciphered the strategies of Rama V and the fascist Phibun to write the Nation. It is not that the displays of gender ambiguity are a screen across the Nation; rather, the Nation is a screen — also urban — across the indeterminacy of gender and identity in Thailand. Last, the indeterminacy and thereby the Nation can be read as a screen across the limitations of supposedly universalistic analyses of Eurocentric gender theory (Jackson, 2004c). It will be argued in Chapter 5 that the epistemological colonisation of Thailand via Western theory and Western ways of seeing things, protected by just such screens as the Nation, is in desperate need of unmasking. Hence, one needs to persist with efforts to understand (read, see through) the ambiguity. The vendors, beggars, tuk-tuk drivers, prostitutes of Sukhumvit may be seen as enlivening an urban landscape of leisure, consumption and entertainment. Theirs, however, is a precarious existence and their places of residence are variously khlong-side informal settlements, shared rooms above shophouses and, most notably, the slums.

Migrating Realms, Ratchaprasong Armageddon The gross hedonism of Sukhumvit, as of Silom (Patpong), was always transgressive against the civilised surfaces of Thai society. In a sense, the exploitive violence of consumption paralleled the periodic political violence of the pattern of coups and student massacres that was principally focused on Sanam Luang, Thammasat University and Ratchadamnoen, although the two were of radically different orders and

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necessarily to be kept apart. The realms of politics and consumption must always be visually separate. By 2005, however, the transgressions of political protest began to migrate from their traditional domain, most notably to Lumphini Park, the city’s most significant green open space. Even more controversially, on 26 March 2006, the protesters moved to the “private” plaza of Siam Paragon on Thanon Rama I, a venue of transnational capital and consumption. (Of course, the plaza had from its inception been a venue for the no less political activities of royal celebration; further, its site was Crown Property Bureau land and it was historically part of the royal parkland of the Srapathum Palace.) Subsequently, in 2008, the antigovernment protest of the PAD laid siege to the Police Headquarters, also on Thanon Rama I. The next seizure was of the international realm (the “postmodern hyperspace” itself ), as the PAD captured the Suvanabhumi and Don Muang airports. This disorder of the realm of political violence invading the landscape of consumption cast a disabling doubt over the carefully constructed surfaces of the performative state. The surfaces began to shatter; in April and May 2010, they were swept away utterly. At the Ratchaprasong intersection, all illusions ended; anti-tank missiles were fired at the BTS Skytrain; the revered Chulalongkorn Hospital was invaded by black-shirts hunting their enemies; then, on 19 May, there was the Royal Thai Army’s counter-attack, scores dead, Central World and much more of the city’s centre ablaze. The Sukhumvit corridor (more precisely, Rama I and Phloenchit), long the focus of the third level of colonisation and its contestation, had become a new focus of the first level — the battle between city and provinces. By September 2010, the Thai regime of screens — even more, of masks — had decreed the disappearance of 19 May and its production of ruins. The reconstruction of the Ratchaprasong intersection and of Central World was on proud display while the site of this phrenetic activity was masked in screens and boards proclaiming the official rhetoric that all this destruction is, ultimately, a wonderful thing as it will lead to a new outburst of love, hope and true patriotism.

A Concluding Note Both visually and in the sheer complexity of the messages (information) that the vision presents, Bangkok space is disordered, muddled, chaotic, a shambles, which is not to deny the seductive attraction of the muddle.

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Figure 3.11 The transformations of Central World Plaza: (a) 6 February 2010; (b) 21 May 2010; (c) 1 September 2010. The screens of happiness of September 2010 mask the conflagration of 19 May and its destruction. The screens proclaim “Love”, “Loving Thailand”, “Prosperity to Thailand: One Country, One Family and One People”, “Everything will be OK”, “Hope”, “No Love, No Hope, No Future”, “Dance Together”, “Together We Can”, “We Miss You Zen”. Source of image (b): Sidh Sintusingha.

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The complexity is variously simply visual (the product of myriad individual actions), functional (the intersections of formal and informal activity) and symbolic (the overlaying screens). In this last sense, the bewildering visual turmoil is a product of the multiple layering of its legitimating screens — the endless royal portraits ambivalently blending into Buddhist and Brahmanical shrines, then the spirit houses and the more popular-Buddhist votive landscape, the flags and monuments to the military and the Nation. This effect of the screens of Nation, King and Religion as complexity is only phenomenal, however. At any deeper level, their effect is not to disorder reality but, in sinister vein, to order it: across the chaos of a passing, ephemeral, untrustworthy world, there is always the reassuring, authorising veil of the King, the disciplining surface of the Nation and the motivating screen of the Religion.

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Chapter 4

Landscapes of Ruin and the Fourth Level of Colonisation Ratchadapisek, the Khlong Toei Slums

The fourth level of colonisation is that of the culture itself. Various of its manifestations have been observed in Chapter 3, in the context of an increasingly globalised world from the 1960s onwards: American R&R and then international tourism transformed long tolerated practices of polygamy and sexual dalliance, the shopping mall transformed old practices of trade, while land speculation and property development — long royally-led — shifted to a new order of magnitude as the city “internationalised”. The irresolvable tension between liberal democracy and elitist hegemony, exploding in the massacres and coups, can also be viewed as alien culture (the goodness of democracy) intruding into an older socio-political universe. All of these intrusions continue. However, Thai mimicry of mostly Western culture and practices, always aided by increasingly globalised media, has more recently vastly increased the scale of the erosions. The prostitution scene has assumed a Vegas-scale grandeur; property development “went feral”, only to crash destructively in 1997, leaving a landscape of ruins; the pursuit of the consumers littered the whole Bangkok region with shopping malls for the affluent to escape from the lower classes; the scale of the social class divide escalated after 2006 as the city became a realm of contestation and ultimately destruction in both physical space and cyberspace. The following will first address the production of this most recent manifestation of the city as a wrecked realm. The second part of the chapter scratches the surfaces of its grosser wreckage to reveal something 126

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of the material interests that have underpinned it but then, complementarily, the slums that are the by-product of modernity’s onslaught on Bangkok. The focus is on reading the ruins themselves — what lessons are to be drawn?

1. Colonising Ideologies and the Production of Ruins There are three interlinked stories to be told about the social construction of Bangkok’s ruins. The first, concerning the abandonment of the city and its life to the culture of the automobile, has been long-running. The second, even longer-running in its underlying causes, is of the herd mentality of property developers which, however, in 1997 yielded a dramatic moment of spectacular implosion. Both are stories of “learning from the West”. Third is a story, again of emulation of the West, that concerns erosions of both the life and the representation of the city — Vegas, Starbucks, franchises and concessions.

Highways and the Mass Transit Fiasco The decline of European influence in Southeast Asia generally, as a consequence of the Second World War, yielded a vacuum that was rapidly filled by American ideas, institutions, corporations and products. This was the context for the production of the Bangkok Metropolitan Plan 2533, by American consultants Litchfield and Associates (1960). Released in 1960 after some three years of study, the plan was limited from the start: there had been no comprehensive base plan; results of the 1960 Population Census — the first by the Central (National) Statistical Office — were not available, nor were there other consistent population data; and there was a dearth of local expertise.1 It is therefore not surprising that the plan was essentially an American-style land-use plan with a highway network. It presented two disabling anomalies. First, a vision of neatly allocated land uses, to be supported by mechanisms of zoning and development control, represented the paradigmatic opposite of a Thai understanding of space and its occupation. Bewilderingly muddled Bangkok — the juxtapositions and superimpositions — presents a non-elite space where almost any activity may occur anywhere. The notion of zoned land use would be incomprehensible; further, the mechanisms of local development control would defy administrative ingenuity.

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Second, the future was seen to lie with the automobile; fixed-rail public transport should be abandoned and, in Bangkok’s case, some 30 highways should be built in a conventional pattern of radiating arterials and circumferential ring-roads overlaying the old pattern of khlong. As roads had come late to Bangkok, they are thin on the ground and unable, at the local level, to provide for an automobile city. The plan was never formally adopted although its assumptions certainly were: the automobile industry was encouraged, more khlong were filled in and the remaining trams removed. The various agencies continued to proceed on a project by project basis, citing the plan when it supported what they wanted to do but otherwise ignoring it. The first expressway did not open until the early 1980s; the 21-kilometre First Stage Expressway was completed in 1987; three more projects were operating by 1996, to yield by then a total expressways length of 91 kilometres — out of a promised 1,042 kilometres (Bangkok Bank, 1996: 11; Bello et al., 1998: 99). There had been a First Revised Metropolitan Plan following that of 1960 and then what was in effect a third plan, the Greater Bangkok Plan 2543. These merely confirmed the directions of the 1960 plan but extended the zoned development area to accommodate uncontrolled population growth — the earlier plan had curiously assumed that the government could limit the population to 4.5 million by 1990. Extrapolations from the 1960 and 1970 censuses were suggesting an unsupportable metropolitan population of 13.62 million by 2000. The roads were chronically grid-locked and the quality of urban life was collapsing, with the greatest impact being on people’s time and hence on family life and health. New interest in public transit began in the 1970s. A four-year German study led to a proposal for a three-line electric system and a considerable range of further ideas were subsequently advanced, advocated by various private-investor interests allied with competing agencies of the Thai bureaucracy, in the absence of a single, strong, coordinating authority. The machinations of rival agencies and their various political and capitalist allies eventually led to the implementation of three schemes in the 1990s: the Bangkok Transportation System Corporation (BTS), a joint operation of the Tanayong Company and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA); second, the state-operated Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority (MRT); third, and most ambitious of all, the Hopewell Network. The first two are now operating, the third is not.

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The Hopewell Network was awarded to a Hong Kong-based construction group, allegedly following substantial kickbacks to a government minister.2 A contract was signed with the State Railway of Thailand in November 1990 worth some US$3.2 billion for a 60-kilometre, multi-deck road and rail system called the Bangkok Elevated Road and Train System (BERTS), without a feasibility study or clear timeline for completion. There were to be three phases: the first would be a north-south line from Hualamphong station to Don Muang airport, the second an east-west line from Taling Chan to Hua Mak, near Suan Luang (Chapter 2) and subsequently replaced by the skytrain route to the new Suvannabhumi airport, with the third a spur to the port. All three would be built over the top of existing SRT (State Railway of Thailand) lines. The first was to be in operation by 1995 and the rest by 1999. There were difficulties securing the necessary financial backers, the project was late in meeting promised deadlines and, by 1997, its costs had ballooned to US$6 billion. Then, the 1997 devaluation of the Thai baht triggered the “Asian crisis” and also killed BERTS. Construction stopped and Gordon Wu, the Hong Kong owner of Hopewell Thailand, was reported to have written off some HK$5 billion invested in the enterprise.3 BERTS’ legacy is its grand procession of concrete stanchions, some 1,560 along the Don Muang route, radiating out from the city, kilometre after kilometre, never to be completed and unable to be removed, towering over the terrain they traverse as a monument to planning and “a previous government”. There have been periodic attempts to revive interest in the Hopewell scheme, for example in the 2001 idea from a new chairman of the state railway to abandon the highway component but somehow re-direct the rail element.4 Other schemes arose in 2005 following an assessment by Asia Institute of Technology that it would be cheaper to revive and complete the project than to demolish the stanchions.5 The project was always misconceived, however: it was to connect the commercial and tourist precincts of the city with the Don Muang international airport which was already in the process of being superseded by the new Suvarnabumi airport to the east. While the BTS Skytrain managed to become operational, here too there were difficulties. The proposal was for a 23.7-kilometre elevated train at considerable height above some of the city’s most significant roads — the Central Station, at Siam Square, would be some 30 metres above ground. The threat provoked a rare phenomenon: a Thai public protest on an environmental issue. The group Thai Environmental and

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Community Development rose against the mass transit projects in July 1993, eventually forcing the government to hold public hearings in 1995 and leading to another rare phenomenon in Thai public life, the provision of some information. This revealed, inter alia, that the BTS would reduce the traffic volume by only six per cent. The consequent speculation was that traffic would increase to absorb any increased road capacity. For any real improvement, it was estimated that a 200kilometre system would be needed. As public pressure increased, the Ministry of Science Technology and the Environment was compelled to hold further public hearings and finally to make a series of concessions. Significant among these was a ruling that no elevated rail structures would be permitted within a 25-square kilometre area of central Bangkok. The BTSC contract, however, provided for such structures, the BTSC sued and the government caved in. The Skytrain remained a skytrain, with its two lines opening to public use on 5 December 1999 — King Bhumibol’s 72nd birthday. The Sukhumvit line runs east-west above Sukhumvit-Phloenchit then south-north above Phaya Thai-Pahonyothin. A Silom line runs south to north over Sathorn, Silom and Ratchadamri then west above Rama I where it links with the Sukhumvit line at Siam Square. To mark its tenth anniversary in 2009, the Silom line was extended across the Chao Phraya river to Wongwian Yai in Thonburi. A further extension southeast on Sukhumvit, to Soi 107, is scheduled for completion in 2011. Other extensions are meant to follow (Jeerawan, 2009). The BTSC’s difficulties have continued even as its expansion has been pursued. Its planned extensions have been mired in the uncertain politics, favouritism and nepotism of the era and its expected ridership was not immediately achieved, with initially only 200,000 passenger trips per day. Not until December 2005 did it reach 500,000 per day. Ticket revenue could only meet train operating costs; construction loans remained unserviced. Keeree Kanjanapas (Wong Chong Shan), as chairman of the long-established, listed property developer and major BTSC shareholder, Tanayong Public Company Limited, became founder and CEO of BTSC. In the decade of the financial crisis, 1995–2004, the Kanjanapas family’s ranking in the shareholder list on the Thai stock market slipped from six to 75 (Natenapha, 2008: 56). The third mass transit system was the state-operated Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority (MRTA), originally to be a 21-kilometre elevated railway similar to but separate from the BTS system. It too was caught in the public protest but succumbed to the pressure and went

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Figure 4.1 The fixed rail transit system in 2010.

underground. Its single line runs west to east under Rama IV then north under Ratchadapisek-Asoke before turning west to Chatuchak Park and Bang Sue; after much difficulty constructing massive engineering facilities deep in the mud on which the city is built, it was finally opened on 3 June 2004. An initiating concern of the citizens’ protest movement had been the lack of a coherent plan or of any coordination to link the various projects and their competing bureaucratic advocates. The various networks would intersect with each other and with the existing expressway

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Figure 4.26 Prediction or fantasy: the proposed future state of the fixed rail transit system. Redrawn by the author from Bangkok Master Plan (future Bangkok mass transit map) of Chatchawal Phansopa as updated January 2005, at [accessed 6 March 2010].

system at some 30 locations; there were, however, no plans for interchanges. There were considerable distances and physical barriers between the stations of rival networks, and there was no coordinated ticketing system.

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Despite the trauma of its inception and its subsequent expansion difficulties, the impact of the BTS on the city has been extraordinary. It has effectively transformed the urban property market and thereby the form of the city, especially in the Sukhumvit corridor (Chapter 3); its trains at most times are close to capacity; the objections of the past are no longer heard. The calls now are more often for expansion of the total mass transit system and the various agencies and their corporate allies and political backers respond with plans to rival the scale of a Tokyo or Seoul system.

Strips or Nodes? The cataloguing of Sukhumvit’s shopping sensations (in Chapter 3) raises the question of what, in fact, is being seen. Is lower Sukhumvit to be understood as a five-kilometre shopping strip or as a number of nodes (Siam, Asoke with its office towers, Emporium with its hotels and condominium blocks) connected by a road and latterly by the BTS? Thana Chirapiwat (2007) has raised the issue of whether Bangkok is planned as a mono-centred city, or as multi-centred with the implication of nodal development. Certainly, the 1999 Comprehensive Plan was conceptualised with a strong centre surrounded by concentric rings but also incorporating elements of the polycentric urban model, with a distribution of designated sub-centres (Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, 1999; Bangkok Metropolitan Administration Policy and Planning Department, 2000).7 The extent of the indicated city centre would tend to challenge ideas of “centre”: it included all of Rattanakosin, Dusit, Charoen Krung and the Silom-Sathorn district and Pathumwan (Siam). While lower Sukhumvit was nominated as a subcentre, it was contiguous with the centre. In its “vision statement”, the Plan emphasised decentralisation to sub-centres along and within an outer ring road; the intention to implement a polycentric strategy was also recommended by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology consultant team in a study titled “A Vision for Bangkok” (Bangkok Metropolitan Administration et al., 1995; Hack, 2001; Simmonds and Hack, 2001). Thana notes, however, that the city centre is far more powerful in attracting commercial investment and is more land-intensive than distributed sub-centres: in 2000, for example, more permits for buildings with six or more storeys were issued in the central districts (22, for some 187,708 square metres) than

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Figure 4.3 The 1999 Plan: centre, sub-centres and a highway network.

in the districts with designated sub-centres (15, covering 157,721 square metres). The latter, moreover, would have included the surge on lower Sukhumvit — surely to be seen more as part of “the centre”. This still does not answer the question: linear or nodal growth? For this, Thana looked at the city’s northeastern area, more specifically at the Latphrao-Ramintra “super-block”, defined by Thanons Phahonyothin (in the west), Ramintra (north), Nawamin (east) and Lat Phrao (south). Three new arterial roads cut through the super-block: the EkamaiRamintra Expressway, Kaset-Nawamin and Ratchadapisek-Hagtairat. The Outer Ring Road also intersects its northeastern corner, while the

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MRT Subway cuts its southwestern corner. The earlier evolution of the area has been traced in Sidh Sintusingh (2003, 2004), who argues that the super-blocks are the main mode of Bangkok’s lateral expansion, a process whereby a few roads are thrust out into the semi-rural lands as “linear urbanism”. These may be formally planned and imposed while the soi branching off them and the activities along both roads and soi occur more organically, initiated by temples and households establishing land-links to their khlong-oriented properties and, increasingly today, by commercial real estate interests. The four corners of the Ladphrao-Ramintra super-block are planned for commercial centres and medium-density housing to remove the disruption (to traffic) of strip development. Thana Chirapiwat devises a measure of integrationconnectivity for micro-scale areas that he terms “network neighbourhoods”, in order to observe the agglomeration of commercial and medium-density housing — is it to the high integration-connectivity neighbourhoods at the significant transport intersections or to the lower integrated-connected areas along the older roads (or, improbably, in relatively unconnected areas in the centre of the super-block)? Over the periods 1990–1995 and 1995–2000, not surprisingly, there was growth around the northwestern corner (near the old Don Muang airport) and the southwestern corner (the Central Lat Phrao shopping mall, department store and Sofitel hotel, from the Central Group and dating from 1982). Greater growth, however, can be detected strung along the older arterial roads, notably Lat Phrao, Phahonyothin and Raminthra. So, how does one account for this linear development? To some extent, it is as in other cities: there is always a demand for roadside locations from auto showrooms, drive-in retailers and the like. Bangkok, however, is distinctive in having no fine-scale, interconnecting grid: there are arterial roads at substantial distances apart and often of very limited capacity, from which usually narrow soi run off at right angles, yet there is very little connection between soi. Hence, major nodes will mostly be only a single street which is also part of an arterial: Rama IPhloenchit-Sukhumvit is the classic case, where the grid of Siam Square is the exception demonstrating the rule. Sukhumvit’s commercial activity is along the road itself; although the hotels, condominiums, restaurants, bars, tailors may occupy its soi, all finally are accessible only from Sukhumvit. Other cities have “thick” nodes; Bangkok’s are “thin”. This is the quintessential city of (thin) linear development.

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Figure 4.4 The Latphrao-Ramintra “super-block”.

The Failure of Planning? Bangkok does have planning, albeit to a Western rather than a Thai paradigm. So how should one account for its ineffectiveness? Nattawut Preyawanit (2009) has examined the Bangkok planning system in the

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Figure 4.5 Ribbon development on Thanon Phahonyothin.

specific context of the Bang Kachao agricultural and environmental preservation zone to the south of the city; the lessons are certainly transferable to the city more widely. In 1977, Bang Kachao was designated to be an environmentally preserved zone for the metropolitan region. This was followed by a series of strong planning measures such as the provision of public recreation areas, land use zoning, building codes and a land purchasing programme. These measures were all physical, however; social issues and development were ignored. The consequence has been deterioration with land becoming unproductive and, increasingly, squatter intrusion. Nattawut sees the causes of failure as the physical bias of measures, a failure to recognise the dynamic characteristics of an area, the apolitical approach to planning, an ignorance of implementation capability, lack of ongoing monitoring and, finally, enforcement constraints. This last, so-called enforcement constraint, might realistically be equated with corruption. The power of capital will seemingly always be able to subvert the good intentions that are supposed to give guidance to chronically underpaid bureaucrats entrusted with enforcement. When

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herd mentality overwhelms investor prudence and loose money suborns bureaucrat morality, there will result the sort of physical shambles that characterises Bangkok; there will also, ultimately, be financial collapse.

The Wild Ride of Corporate Capital John Laird sees the genesis of a culture of unthinking, unimaginative, herd development in the earlier explosion of Chinese shophouse building: Going back 60 years and earlier, the Chinese merchant class in Bangkok just built shophouses lining every major street and adjoining side streets, without any space left open except for the grounds within wats (temples) and government offices. A new street, another 500 shophouses … (Laird, 2000: 408).

For the economic roots of its 1997 manifestation, one can turn to Pasuk and Baker (2000), also Kevin Hewison (2002) and Stephan Haggard (2000). Pasuk and Baker (2000: 14–5) suggest four factors that became especially salient in the period immediately prior to the 1997 collapse. First, rapid, export-oriented industrialisation from the mid-1980s aided by increasing foreign direct investment exhausted the supply of skilled labour and infrastructure, causing increased costs (especially in property), resource misallocation and currency appreciation — all to the detriment of the export economy. Second, these conditions led to a slowdown in the early 1990s which, however, was masked by financial liberalisation and global euphoria about “the Asian miracle”. There were massive money inflows and gross domestic investment rose above 40 per cent, far more than the economy could absorb. Third, with falling export competitiveness, the financial inflows generated a sharp rise in domestic consumption, an asset bubble and excessive investment in property. Fourth, economic policymakers failed to control these forces, instead exacerbating them by attempts to maintain the existing policy regime and to prop up the Thai baht. A stop-gap fund, the Financial Institutions Development Fund, was created, which allowed the financial industry to accumulate massive bad debts (Nukul, 1998; Cook, 2008). The real question that Pasuk and Baker ask is: why was this allowed to happen? Some answer that the Thai system was never sustainable (Hewison, 2002; Srisuwan, 1998; Bello et al., 1998); counter-arguments refer more simply to “mistakes” from the policymakers (Pasuk and Baker cite Ammar and Orapin, 1998; Warr, 1998). There are also claims, most

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notably attributed to Paul Krugman (1998, 2000) and US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that the enabling conditions had more to do with corruption, cronyism, non-commercial relations between government, the financial sector and industry, most notably the property development industry. 8 Paul Krugman, in particular, had earlier attacked the idea of an “Asian economic miracle”: the “miracle” had been the result of increasing capital investment with virtually no impact on total factor productivity, whereas only growth in total factor productivity could lead to long-term economic growth (Krugman, 1994). Symptomatic of the culture was the case of Finance One. Americaneducated and Chase Manhattan Bank alumnus Pin Chakkaphak acquired a dormant finance company in 1980, renamed it Finance One and then used it in a wild ride through leveraged acquisitions and takeovers. He would borrow money to buy companies then pledge these, at higher valuations, against bigger loans which would be used to buy more companies. He especially made large inroads into the hire-purchase and rapidly inflating property markets, albeit inflating because of the money he and others like him were pouring in. The group’s securities firms ultimately were handling more than 20 per cent of Thailand’s total stock market volume. It all began to unravel when the “real” economy weakened and the stock market contracted. The Financial Institutions Development Fund spent more than US$1.5 billion trying to save Finance One but collapse was inevitable. Pin left Thailand in September 1997 for a new life in New York and London (Liebhold, 1999). In the event, Thailand’s economy — real or otherwise — grew at an average of more than nine per cent per year from 1985 to 1996, the highest of any country at that time (Leightner, 1999). Inflation was kept reasonably low and the baht was pegged at 25 to the US dollar. On 14 and 15 May 1997, massive speculative attacks hit the baht. On 30 June, Prime Minister Chuvalit Yongchaiyudh declared that he would not devalue the baht; however, he failed to defend the currency and, on 2 July, was forced to let it float. The economy immediately collapsed. The baht lost more than half its value, the Thai stock market fell 75 per cent, there were massive layoffs in the finance, real estate and construction sectors, workers returned to their villages and an estimated 600,000 foreign workers were repatriated. Western wisdom came to the rescue on 11 August, ensuring that a crisis would become a calamity. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced a rescue package for Thailand of more than US$17

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billion subject to the conditions of Western orthodoxy: the passing of laws relating to bankruptcy procedures, to do with reorganising and restructuring, together with a strong regulatory framework for banks and other financial institutions. On 20 August, the IMF approved another bailout package of US$3.9 billion. Central to the IMF prescriptions was the imposition of severe austerity measures linked to a series of drastic economic reforms influenced by (Western) neo-liberal economic ideology under the label of a “structural adjustment package” (SAP). The SAPs demanded reduction of public deficits by cut-backs on government services, allowing insolvent banks and other financial institutions to fail, and an aggressive raising of interest rates. Thailand was obligated to produce the same sorts of financial institutions and regulatory arrangements that prevailed in the economically (democratically, morally) superior United States and Europe. The subsequent charge has been that the poor have been penalised (by the IMF, the World Bank, the UN …) for the excesses of the bourgeoisie. When the US itself entered recession in 2001, the responses were the opposite of these: government spending was increased, interest rates lowered and expansionary policies followed. Far more dramatically, similar expansionary policies were pursued in the 2008– 2009 Global Financial Crisis. By contrast, Thailand in 1997 would be punished for its profligacy in accepting foreign (for the most part Western) capital. The IMF’s assault on Thailand was reportedly aggressive, castigating it with the proven superiority of the Western capitalist model (Pasuk and Baker, 2000: 38). The burden would be placed on the poor (Pasuk and Baker, 2000: 69). That said, the cries of distress, not surprisingly, were mostly from an aggrieved middle class. The ill-directed loans in the wild euphoria of the 1990s had gone to fuel the property booms in other Asian centres (Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Surabaya) but nowhere as dramatically as in Bangkok (Ghosh, 2001: 134). The collapse was proportionate to the madness. In 2006, the caretaker government, installed following that year’s coup, determined to revive the 281 still-abandoned building projects from the 1997 crisis. The Finance Ministry had proposed that the expired construction permits for the projects should be extended, whereupon the Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) submitted the plan to the Council of State. The council, however, determined that such an extension amounted to an amnesty to selected investors; an amnesty is required to be non-discriminatory and hence the proposal was unconstitutional.9 The projects would accordingly remain as

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monuments to the herd mentality of Asian investors/developers, even though the inundating investment had largely been from elsewhere, and to the wisdom of Western institutions and the superiority of their advisors, decreeing that Western models would be (selectively) imposed. As something of a footnote to the 1997 saga, on 11 December 1999, Pin Chakkaphak, erstwhile financial wizard of collapsed Finance One, was arrested in London to be charged by Thai authorities with embezzlement. By that time, there were some ten or more cases under way against participants in the debacle; none at that time, however, were directed at the regulators or other officials who had presided over it (Liebhold, 1999).

Corporatisation and its Representation Like prostitution, commerce is indigenous to human society; what seems to have been learnt in Thailand’s case from the West is its large-scale corporatisation. Yet here too, like the corporatisation of the sex industry beginning in the 1960s, the first shopping malls can be viewed as a transformation of local patterns — the shophouses of Siam Square are paralleled by the alleys of Siam Centre, while the string of ever larger malls along Rama I still maintains the more traditional form of the commercial strip. Certainly, the malls represent a form of cultural erosion. However, there are two further sources of such erosion that are clearly to be identified with the fourth level of colonisation. The first is represented in the import of fringe shopping malls observed in Chapter 3. These resulted mostly from imitation of clearly admired Western models: Central Plaza (Lat Phrao) in 1982 and Seacon Square in 1994, for example, preceded the planning. The second intrusion into indigenous forms of commerce is far more clearly to be attributed to global capital, with Carrefour, Tesco, and Robinson. Reference has already been made to the indigenous control of the proliferating 7-Eleven infiltration; what is significant, however, is that a Thai entrepreneur felt constrained to adopt a Japanese/ American marketing idea and label. The origins of 7-Eleven were in 1927 in Dallas, Texas. Significantly, in 1963, the stores spread to Las Vegas; thence to Japan and elsewhere. In 1991, Ito-Yokado, its Japanese and largest franchisee, gained a controlling share in the company; since 2005, 7-Eleven has been a subsidiary of the Japanese Seven and I Holdings Co. Thailand has in excess of 4,000 outlets, linked to CP

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Group (Chapter 2), of which around 1,500 are in Bangkok, giving Thailand the fourth largest number of 7-Eleven stores (after the US, Japan and Taiwan). A similar story is that of Starbucks, founded in Seattle in 1971 and mutating into its present form in 1987. Its expansion into Thailand was in 1998 at Central Chidlom (Phloenchit) and from there subsequently to the farang zones (Sukhumvit, Silom) and the shopping malls. MacDonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC also infect. The Robinson department stores — nine in Bangkok and nine in the provinces — might almost seem indigenous when seen alongside the dominance of the Japanese chains. They are run by the Robinson Department Store Public Co., a Thai public company linked with Central Pattana Group. The name and its origins, however, are once again American with its genealogy tracing back to the May Department Stores Company founded in Leadville Colorado in 1877 and to the J.W. Robinson Co. founded in Los Angeles in 1881. The more upmarket malls and department stores — Paragon, Gaysorn, Emporium — have mostly shed any local identity. Indeed, there are the globalist labels of Giorgio Armani, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada and the like. Japanese department stores are joined by Japanese bookseller chains pressing against the more indigenous Asia Books.

Ratchadapisek While the proliferating global icons would indicate the internationalist intrusion into the culture of everyday life, there are also larger-scale and more confronting intrusions. None are more emblematic than the Vegasing of Thanon Ratchadapisek. Whereas the rationale for Charoen Krung and Sukhumvit (and Silom and Surawong) was simply trade and the joys of land development, Thanon Ratchadaphisek carries the marks of the altogether imported ideology of Western (American) road planning: it is a planned street though for nothing more than traffic, transverse rather than radial. Rather than redefining the nation (like Ratchadamnoen) or transforming the old fabric of the city (like Sukhumvit supplanting the khlong), Ratchadaphisek cuts through that fabric and challenges the integrity of the nation. Ratchadapisek resulted when Sukhumvit soi 21 (Asoke Montri) was extended south to Thanon Rama IV and north to Thanon Phahonyothin to provide a cross-town, mostly six-lane to ten-lane road to prefigure the later, grade-separated highways, the

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BTS Skytrain and the MRT subway which, coincidentally, runs under Ratchadapisek. Where successive settlements along its length and subsequent multiple overlays mark Charoen Krung, and constantly interweaving infiltrations mark Sukhumvit, Ratchadaphisek is a bulldozer boulevard. In its northern stretch, it is also Bangkok’s “Strip”, a parade of façades, pretence and flashing neon, a collection of explicit Las Vegas copies, resplendent with its own Caesars (sic) and other replicants. Ratchadapisek and the highways are, simply, of a different order of city to older Bangkok. One might argue that the new highways have been inevitable, simply to tackle the problem that Bangkok was never built for road traffic, a late invasion into a world of khlong and local self-sufficiency. That argument might reasonably refer to other cities that have not taken this path of late-inserted gargantuan roads, where romantic references might be made to small Italian cities of narrow or no streets (Florence, Venice). The reality, however, is that Bangkok is not a small city and, whether or not through misguided investment in roads rather than public transport, it does now have these roads that confront the sorts of intricate, complex, multi-layered spaces described in the preceding chapters — the labyrinths of Charoen Krung, the muddle of Sukhumvit and its soi. Ratchadapisek and its ilk are a colonisation of the culture of the Thai public realm. Cultural colonisation is seen at its most confronting on northern Ratchadapisek although there are other roads with a similar impact. Its iconography is that of the North American “strip”, its imagery evokes nothing quite so powerfully as Las Vegas. The southern reach of Ratchadapisek, on the other hand, leads into the Khlong Toei district — market, slum and the industrial wasteland of the port. Here, one confronts other dimensions of the eroding effect of globalisation and, incidentally, of the social gulf that ultimately accounts for the social disintegration alluded to in the Prologue.

Ratchadapisek Las Vegas Michael Dear (2000: 199) quotes Reyner Banham (1970): Las Vegas takes some established trends in the Los Angeles townscape and pushes them to extremes where they begin to become art, or poetry, or psychiatry.

Ratchadapisek, by contrast, takes nothing from Bangkok. As Alan Hass’ (1995) history of Las Vegas recounts, the gambling, prostitution and

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booze scene took off in the 1930s to soak up the wages of the construction and mining workers of a rough frontier town; the focus was Fremont Street in the downtown core and the decoration was “The West” — exaggeration of the indigenous. Then, in 1941, El Rancho Las Vegas was launched as a “resort motel” out on Highway 91; The Last Frontier opened in 1942; four years later, mobster Bugsy Spiegel opened his Flamingo Hotel; the Strip (and the mafia) took over. The Old West theme was soon supplanted: The Stardust (1958) brought an outer-space light show to the Strip; Caesars Palace (1966) was ancient Rome; Circus Circus (1968) was, unsurprisingly, circus-themed; the South Sea islands gave the Mirage Hotel (1989) with its volcano; Excalibur (1990); Treasure Island (1993); and the list goes on. There is also New York, Paris and Venice. The indigenous has largely sunk from sight. Bangkok’s Soi Cowboy — part of the Sukhumvit world — is themed, with Rawhide, Lucky Star, Long Gun, Apache Coyote Bar, Cowboy 1 and Cowboy 2 (though the Old West is somewhat compromised by Sheba’s, Dundee, Suzie Wong, Jungle Jim and the like). Ratchadaphisek is more like Las Vegas: there is ancient Rome, French chic and Old West. Significantly, it caters for a more Thai-oriented and wider Asian clientele rather than the cosmopolitan floods of Sukhumvit. Whereas Las Vegas began with the indigenous and traces persist (though more on Fremont than on the Strip), on Ratchadapisek, there is — extraordinarily — no indigenous pastiche (reinterpretation, exaggeration) that might challenge issues of self-identification in Bangkok. For such exaggerations of the Thai (and the Vietnamese), one needs to go to Kuala Lumpur’s Jalan P. Ramlee (King, 2008b: 45).

2. Reading Ruins Despite the Vegas referencing, a Thai identity is indeed struck on Ratchadapisek: far more explicitly than at Patpong, Nana or Soi Cowboy, at Ratchadapisek there are the counter-references to the legitimating screens of King and Religion. The ten-storeyed Poseidon, at the northern end of the pleasure strip, is commonly proclaimed to be the world’s largest massage establishment. Directly opposite it, in the grounds of The Grand Ayudhaya Hotel, is an ancient prang, traces of other sacred constructions, together with two more modern shrines; its devotees are much in evidence. Other shrines and spirit houses mark one’s progress along the one-and-a-half kilometres of the strip; the King’s image adorns various office towers that line the road as well as the road itself.

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Figure 4.6 (a and b) Soi Cowboy; (c and d) Ratchadapisek.

Towards its southern end, marked by a further collection of hotels, is a complex that includes the Chuvit-linked Emmanuelle, Casanova and Hi-Class (Chapter 3).10 The entrance to the complex’s laneway is dominated by a grandly arching sign proclaiming “Emmanuelle” with traces of Paris art nouveau and two fine shrines. The cultural cross-dressing is, incidentally, completed back in Las Vegas itself where Caesars Palace, arguably the quintessential Vegas institution, in 1984 acquired an exquisite Thai-Brahman-Buddhist

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Figure 4.7 Las Vegas homage to Bangkok: the BrahmanBuddhist shrine at Caesars Palace to reflect the Bangkok Erawan Shrine. Alternatively, the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel may be seen to reflect Caesars Palace.

shrine, an alleged replica of Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine, as a gift from eminent Thai benefactors to Vegas culture. In both Bangkok and Las Vegas, it symbolises good fortune and prosperity. In 2004, it was moved to the resort’s courtyard amid the appropriate grandeur of Forum Romanum evocations. At 9.09 am on 27 (3 × 9) September (9) 2009, to mark the auspiciousness of the reign of Rama IX (9), Buddhist monks and Thai traditional dancers re-dedicated the shrine. Nine doves were released.11 It completes the referential Bangkok-Las Vegas reflexivity.

The Geographies and Iconographies of Prostitution While sexual ambivalence has long been embedded in Thai society (royally-led), with an acceptance of bigamy and sexual dalliances and of gender ambiguities (Chapter 3), its blatant commercialisation (commodification) came to the fore with the 1960s Patpong “Road” in the Silom area. With the Vietnam War and the rise of Sukhumvit, “entertainment” spread to that area — the GI-focused Grace Hotel and others referred to in Chapter 3. A variety of venues emerged: Nana Plaza

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(Sukhumvit Soi 4), Soi Cowboy (off Soi Asoke and effectively at the intersection of Sukhumvit and Asoke-Ratchadapisek), Soi 22 and, more transiently, Sukhumvit Square (latterly Chuvit Garden), Clinton Plaza (also demolished for new investment), Soi Zero (likewise now gone) … An earlier transience accounts for Ratchadapisek. While Patpong became a focus of farang indulgence, anecdote has it that Thanon Phetchaburi had been a zone of indigenous prostitution, subsequently invaded and transformed by the American presence during the Vietnam War. The indigenous clientele and their institutions subsequently migrated north to the new, glitzier zone of Ratchadapisek. The visibility of the Ratchadapisek “entertainment zone” ensures reactions of outrage. With Caesars [Palace?], Emmanuelle, Poseidon, Old West themes, the references to Las Vegas, both the Strip and Fremont Street, are explicit. The neon and spectacle, allied with the vastness of the boulevard, confront one with the images of prostitution explicitly and of gambling more by implication — gambling is illegal in Thailand (as, of course, is prostitution; however, there is a difference). Patpong is largely unthemed although the Kings Group has bestowed names that give it a “royal” badging (King’s Castle I, II, III, Queen’s Castle, Camelot, etc). It is interesting that this somewhat confronting badging has not attracted charges of lèse majesté. Perhaps the commercial success and the raking-in of foreign revenue give it immunity. Nana Plaza has Hollywood, Voodoo, Rainbow and many others, but no theme seems to be implied. Soi Cowboy, despite the Vegasthemed “Old West” references, also has Sheba, Dundee, Suzie Wong, Dollhouse, Déjà Vu, Midnite and similar. Ratchadapisek, however, is a far more explicit translation. An interesting variant on themeing comes with the bars, clubs and small massage establishments of Sukhumvit Soi 33, where naming mostly evokes art. So there is a Dali club, also Vincent Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Goya, Monet. No Thai painters have been similarly honoured. There is also a pattern of ethnicised entertainment: Sukhumvit 3 and 5 are Arab (Middle Eastern); 11 is Korean; 39 is Japanese. Similarly, whereas Silom’s Patpong may be seen as “centre” (with its night market), the neighbouring Thaniya is Japanese (and no Westerner shall ever be admitted). Ratchadapisek, its hotels and brothels mostly cater for an indigenous and North Asian clientele — Japanese, Korean, Chinese. Back in the Patpong area, there is the small soi at the northeastern end of Thanon Surawong that has become the city’s largest collection of gay go-go bars.

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Ruins Ratchadapisek might be viewed as the glittering veil of dreams across the reality of exploitation, ruined culture and destroyed lives. There is another realm of ruin and destruction that is more difficult to disguise with references to dreams of glamour (Las Vegas): Bangkok’s skyline carries the ruins of the 1990s’ real estate bubble and the 1997 bust described earlier — the ultimate demonstration of investor-developer venality and of the invasion of globalist capital (neo-colonialism). Ratchadapisek can offer a fine commentary on the post-1997 landscape of ruins. Many buildings were left abandoned and unfinished; a twin-towered complex near the Thailand Cultural Centre on the eastern side of Ratchadapisek, like some 500 other projects in Bangkok, collapsed in the financial chaos and remained an uncompleted ruin. It faced, on the western side of the road, a relatively successful collection of a Carrefour store, a Tesco Lotus, other franchised outlets and less ambitious office space. Being on “the wrong side” of the road might be seen as a factor in its collapse; its gross oversupply of space may also have been significant. However, the real cause, locally explained, related to its feng shui: for one thing, the vast entry arch of its podium (a mouth), its disposition of fenestration (eyes) and the twin towers rising from its head (horns?) gave it an inescapable, almost terrifying anthropomorphism — or was it to evoke a malign dragon? Worse, the orientation of the vastly arched entrance, to the southwest, boded no good. So its failure was always immanent in its feng shui. Then, in the 2007–2008 period, it was re-imaged. Blandness replaced the dragon and it was re-badged as “Cyber World Tower”. The explanation for the re-birth would seem to be that the developers and their bankers saw that Ratchadapisek, like Sukhumvit, might remain marketable. The feng shui, however, remained untrustworthy.

City of Ruins Eminent Thai architect Rangsan Torsuwan designed “Silom Precious Tower” in the early 1990s to be Southeast Asia’s largest building with 300,000 square metres of floor area (the same claim that is made for Central World Plaza with its 550,000 square metres). It is of 68 floors topped with a 30-metre dome and an open-air restaurant at the 64th floor. Its name changed to “Royal Charoen Krung Tower” and then to “State Tower”. It comprises 650 condominium units, 500 serviced apartments, 450 office units and 90 retail outlets. First scheduled to

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Figure 4.8 Ratchadapisek phoenix: (a) terrifying, threatening monster — gaping mouth, beady eyes, protruding horns (1997 ruin) — becomes (b) benign Cyber World Tower (2008 re-imaging).

open in 1996, financial and other difficulties besetting Rangsan forced its delay and then in 1994 its disposal.12 The buyer was Rasri Bualert, a real estate tycoon and reputedly Thailand’s only female arms dealer. Ms Basri helped pay for the project with a loan from the governmentrun Krung Thai Bank, a loan that was reported to be among the non-performing loans that accounted for at least 60 per cent of that bank’s overall portfolio.13 The building’s grand opening was eventually scheduled for May 2004, a delay of some eight years. Royal Charoen Krung Tower (State Tower) was to have had a smaller sibling in the 47-storeyed Sathorn Unique, also with neo-Classical balconies and crowning dome and also from Rangsan Torsuwan. It is now among the 508 buildings abandoned by developers following the 1997 crisis. The projects were taken over by the Financial Sector Restructuring Authority (FRA), the state debt restructuring arm which auctioned them to financial institutions at cheap prices. Sathorn Unique was auctioned for 70 million baht; Rangsan, its original developer and architect, put its real value at 1.8 billion baht. Of the total 508 abandoned buildings, only 380 were reported in the mid-2000s as redeveloped; the other 128 in 76 projects remained abandoned. In most

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Figure 4.9 Deciduous Bangkok: Sathorn Unique (1990s – infinity?, architect Rangsan Torsuwan) and the foregrounding screen of religion (Wat Yannawa, locale of the junk wihan, from Chapter 2).

cases, new owners simply hold them in the hope that the price might rise. An investigation of auction fraud allegedly committed by FRA executives gave some hope to the original developers (including Rangsan) that the courts might intervene and allow them to buy their assets back.14 Court cases in Thailand, however, are likely to remain long unresolved. Sathorn Unique remains one of the most visible of the ruins. It and its neighbour State Tower rise massively out of a Charoen Krung streetscape mostly of two-storeyed residences, shophouses, gold and antique dealers and pharmacies. Although its structural frame was completed before the financial collapse, its concrete cladding starts to peter out after about 20 floors, exposed metal rusts and stains, reinforcing rods hang out in all directions, and the dome is only half finished. It is deciduous like many other Bangkok ruins, shedding bits into its surroundings. Its four-storeyed arches and Corinthian columns are slowly disappearing into the encroaching vines of Bangkok’s ever-immanent jungle; there is graffiti and vandalism; much of its interiors have been pilfered; there are piles of unattached classical-revival columns and bits of statuary. Even more dramatic though less immediately in the public eye is SV Garden, on the Chao Phraya river but some ten kilometres downstream from the area of State Tower and Sathorn Unique. Launched by

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Figure 4.10 Other ruins: (a) SV Garden, Thanon Rama III, from 1997; (b) Thanon Pahonyothin towers, also from 1997; (c) new ruins from 2008, Sukhumvit Soi 13 seen from Chuvit Garden.

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Figure 4.11 Hopewell ruins. This especially fine stand is along the RangsitVipavadi highway, opposite the entrance to Kasetsart University.

Thai conglomerate SV Group and Hong Kong architect Eric Lai, the aim was to transform an isolated industrial area into Bangkok’s new central business district. Confidence was such that the decision was to build multiple towers all at once; in early 1997, one of the 11 lenders failed, funding was frozen, construction stopped and four major towers were abandoned.15 The grandest, most majestic of Bangkok’s ruins is not tall but vastly extensive. The monumental procession of the Hopewell project’s 1,560 concrete stanchions has been accounted for above. They stand, seemingly forever, as a Stonehenge-like memorial to a previous, lost, incomprehensible time. As with Sathorn Unique, the jungle advances.

Creative Destruction and Khlong Toei The northern stretch of Ratchadapisek has displayed its ruins from the 1997 financial debacle, also the cultural ruins of its Las Vegas traces. The road’s mid section, from Sukhumvit to Thanon Rama IX, is Soi Asoke (Thanon Asoke Montri), also a zone of ruins post-1997. The opening

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of the BTS Skytrain along Sukhumvit in 1999 and of the MRT subway under Asoke-Ratchadapisek in 2004 made the Asoke-Sukhumvit intersection Bangkok’s most publicly accessible location. Its abandoned buildings were rapidly completed and the area increasingly takes on the trappings of a CBD. The next section, south of Sukhumvit, traverses the Khlong Toei district, skirting the vast Khlong Toei slums. While the slums are the obverse of the financial strength of the Sukhumvit intersection, the vitality of Sukhumvit itself and the spectacle of northern Ratchadapisek, it can also be seen as in part their consequence and as an enabling condition of their success. The area of Khlong Toei has a history as a port to cities upstream on the Maenam Chao Phraya that allegedly goes back to the ninth century; it was subsequently called Pak Nam Phra Pradaeng after images found further down the river in the 1510s. Khlong Thanon Trong was a khlong and parallel road built by Rama IV around 1857, prior to Charoen Krung. The khlong later became known as Khlong Toei and Khlong Hua Lamphong for different sections, while the road was renamed Thanon Rama IV by King Rama VI in 1919. Khlong Toei was subsequently filled, in 1947, to expand the width of Thanon Rama IV.16 The Khlong Toei Port, begun in 1938 and completed after the Second World War, was for a time Thailand’s only significant seaport. Construction workers brought in for the port’s development, together with other labourers who came to operate it, settled in its immediate hinterland on land owned by the Port Authority. The subsequent explosive growth of Bangkok and the persisting poverty of the countryside ensured an equally explosive growth of Khlong Toei to eventually become the city’s largest and arguably most notorious slum. Its population is variously estimated as between 80,000 and 120,000 — the population uncertainty relates in part to the difficulty in enumerating informal settlements for census purposes and in part to the lack of clear definition of “slum”. Indeed, there is not one slum but a sprawling district of disconnected settlements with different histories and exhibiting different forms of informality and living conditions. Khlong Toei acquired its own entertainment area catering mostly to the maritime trade and still accommodates much of Bangkok’s more marginal population. It is mostly unvisited, unseen and undiscussed except in occasional shock at its reported squalor, vice and crimes. It is mostly just imagined away. The description from a Princeton undergraduate could not be bettered, albeit applying to only one of its many parts:

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a

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Figure 4.12 Phases of the Khlong Toei slums: (a) under the Port-Bangna Expressway; (b) Thanon Kheha Phatthana; (c) neo-Classical styled slum on Kheha Phatthana; (d) along the railway tracks; (e) khlong-side from Thanon Kasem Rat; (f ) flats reverting to informality.

It is home to over 120,000 people — a claustrophobic maze of one-room dwellings stacked on top of each other and crammed side by side, insulated only by shifting layers of tin sheeting and particle board. Refuse of every sort is disposed of in uncovered trenches that line the alleys between homes; the trenches are less than one foot deep, so trash and other waste tends to seep beneath the floor boards and onto the front steps of residents’

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homes. Lethargic dogs with disfiguring skin and eye diseases drink and eat from the trenches, and then, in search of food, linger in doorways and sidle up to passersby. Although most houses in Khlong Toei have electricity and water, many homes do not have sanitary latrines. Children are not always in school. Families do not have enough food for three meals a day ... Many adults are unemployed or sporadically employed. Drug use, gambling, and prostitution are rampant (Jamiesen, 2008).

There are stories that show a contrasting side to Khlong Toei, however. One of the more charismatic figures in Thailand is Catholic priest Father Joe Maier, since 1973 the director of the Human Development Foundation (HDF). He is an American priest of the Redemptorist order, who first came to Thailand in 1967, working in northern Isaan then among the Hmong in Laos before coming to Bangkok and the Slaughterhouse neighbourhood of Khlong Toei in 1972 (Barrett, 2008; Maier, 2005). Locally, he is Khun Phaw Joe — Mister Father Joe. The HDF’s first one-baht-a-day school opened in Khlong Toei in 1974; by 2008, there were 31 such schools in the Bangkok slums (the fees are now ten-baht-a-day — for those who can afford it). A home for street children followed, then a health clinic for the poor. A housing programme was begun for hundreds of landless families, subsequently expanded to rebuild entire neighbourhoods destroyed in fires, a common occurrence. Reportedly, some 10,000 houses have been built or rebuilt (Barrett, 2008). Around 1997, a legal aid service was started to defend street children in legal cases.17 The Mercy Centre, in the HDF’s programmes, started as a safe place of refuge in the 1970s. It developed to serve two main functions: it operates as a hospice, as “a kind of family for those who don’t have one”; second, it provides an outreach programme, especially for those children it cannot convince to come to the centre. There is also a Girls’ Home, to “keep young girls off the street, and provide them with a safe place to live, and an education, and thus a chance”. There is a Community Health Development and Isle of Peace programme, where the majority of patients are HIV-positive. Then, there is the Home for Mothers and Babies with AIDS.18 All this proceeds without land title or official permits. Indeed, Father Joe is reportedly open about the need to bribe officials and to hide ongoing construction under blue tarps (Hanrahan, 2008). Another story is that of a Catholic nun, Joan Evans, an Australian member of the Presentation order. At age 59, she left the calm of Perth

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for Khlong Toei in 1991. She sponsors schooling for the slum children, distributes meals from a decrepit van, and provides packet milk to mothers. Father Joe’s comment: Women are the backbone of the world in the slums. This is a matriarchal society and women are the ones who hold it all together. And she’s answering the basic needs of the women here, feeding their babies with powdered milk … holding and playing with AIDS babies and telling them that they’re loved (quoted in Pollard, 2001).

Yet another linked story is that of Prateep Ungsongtham Hata, born in the Khlong Toei slums and, in the early 1960s, working as a child labourer. Prateep’s subsequent political clout has been based on a somewhat self-promulgated story of her life: at age 12, she began to put aside a portion of her meagre wages to pay for a night-school education. As there were no schools for the slum children, she started one of her own in her own slum house, only to find that much of her time was taken up with helping the slum children and their families cope with the conditions of slum life. When threatened with eviction, her neighbours asked her to put their case to the landowner, the government and the media. Though still a teenager, the success of her campaign and the experience and exposure that it gained for her was a step to a public career of service and advocacy. In 1978, at age 26, Prateep won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service for “bringing learning, better health and hope for impoverished children otherwise denied services in the port-side slum of Khlong-Toei”. The prize money enabled her to establish the Duang Prateep Foundation. She was subsequently the first Asian citizen to be awarded the John D. Rockefeller Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mankind (sic) and, in 2004, The World’s Children’s Prize. The Duang Prateep Foundation provides educational scholarships, kindergarten projects, community development, HIV/AIDS programmes, microfinancing, a New Life Project for children at risk and even Khlong Toei firefighting services. The Khlong Toei resistance effectively pioneered techniques subsequently adopted more widely in Bangkok slums. Bello et al. (1998: 110–2) suggest that five factors had been significant in Khlong Toei’s successful resistance to the Port Authority and its allies. First was the sheer size of the area, constituting a mass that, if organised as they were in Khlong Toei, would always be difficult to evict. Second was the quality of community leadership: while the role of Prateep may

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have been important, the movement was essentially democratic with leaders being elected from within the communities. The Duang Prateep Foundation, in particular, was a unique organisation in Thailand — “people-based, institutionalised, and well accepted by the public” and able to act as an intermediary across a diversity of levels (Somsook Boonyabancha et al., 1988). Third, the leadership could establish strong external links to NGOs, the press and the wider community, mustering pressure on both city and national politicians. Fourth, good leadership and large numbers could constitute a voting block that politicians fearing democracy needed to take into account. Fifth, the leadership could muster a flexible range of strategies in working with government agencies. Specifically, the National Housing Authority (NHA), founded in 1973 partly in response to the Khlong Toei struggle, became more an ally than an antagonist, devising innovative slum upgrading programmes. The NHA engaged with the fundamental Khlong Toei issue of land-sharing: it directly leased 61 per cent of the slum land from the Port Authority after it had upgraded it and built new houses. In return, the residents voluntarily vacated the other 39 per cent for it to be used by the Port Authority. The NHA approach was subsequently extended to other slum areas though not with the same success that was attained in Khlong Toei (Yap, 1992). The strategy of land sharing was in part an initiative of another slum activist. Somsook Boonyabancha, working with Schlomo Angel in the NHA during the 1980s, has for three decades worked to persuade slum landowners and developers to negotiate property settlements with illegal squatters, rather than fight lengthy battles over evictions. The poor live on the land [they squat on] for such a long time, but they never own the land. They have no security. And because of new commercial developments, these poor communities are invariably evicted — especially if the land they occupy is prime land. This is a form of violence through development (Somsook Boonyabancha, in Gill, 2002).

By 1996, Thailand had enacted a law permitting slum dwellers to register their houses in a government housing register, further facilitating the land sharing strategy (Angel et al., 1978, 1983; Angel and Somsook, 1988). In 1992, Somsook established the Urban Community Development Office (UCDO) with help from the Thai government. Through UCDO (subsequently Community Organization Development Institute, CODI), communities have access to various low-interest loan schemes such as housing development loans, income generation loans, revolving

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network loans and community enterprise loans. Microfinancing was linked to microsaving — it was the idea of “saving and borrowing oneday-at-a-time” (Gill, 2002). Princeton University student Molly Jamiesen, quoted above, looked at one aspect of microfinancing in Khlong Toei. She specifically observed the Step Ahead Micro Enterprise Development programme which, in 2002, began disseminating small loans (from US$90 to US$330) to local women to enable them to start or improve small businesses. Interest rates ranged from six to 15 per cent depending on the term. For the first few years, the programme was mostly funded by donors; today, it is almost completely dependent on interest payments and borrowers’ savings deposits. Jamiesen describes her conversation with a borrower called Jai who started a business with her husband to prepare and deliver meals. By conventional measures, microfinance had been successful for her: her business had grown, she had repaid her loan, taken out a larger one and was depositing savings. However, to Jamiesen’s surprise, when asked if she would now be able to leave Khlong Toei, Jai replied that she and her husband would never leave. It was only one story but it raised the question: is the community of the slum so strong — the bonds of poverty so real — that escape is not the goal (Parker, 2008)? Of course, there is always another equally plausible explanation: it is from the trade of the slums that they have succeeded and they will not walk away from the source of their success. Certainly, Khlong Toei is dangerous. There are always the threats of eviction, extortion, violence and fire. The activists like Father Joe, Sister Joan, Prateep and others who empower the underdogs against their predators constantly face the possibility of assassination. Yet the power of Khlong Toei in the wider context of Bangkok is in forms of inspiration that it can present and in the creativity and innovation manifested in its day-to-day stories. Some aspects of this inspiration are surprising — a final comment from Father Joe: Khlong Toei is a sacred place, Father Joe said, with a mosque, a Catholic church and Buddhist temples. “It’s home, where we all live”, he said (Yuan, 2008).

The children are mostly Buddhist and go to their temples; they also go to Mass. “Buddhists and Muslims taught me how to be a Christian,” he added. The assault on Khlong Toei continues. An extensive area adjoining Thanons Ratchadapisek and Rama IV accommodated some decaying,

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concrete, walk-up housing blocks but also the Khlong Toei market, especially popular with the poor for its cheap, fresh food. In October 2008, its owner, the Port Authority of Thailand, contracted Legal Professional Co. to clear the area and redevelop it — the construction of the MRT rail system had changed its location from marginal to prime. There followed several months of bitter conflict and standoff between vendors and the developer. Among ploys to remove the vendors were rent increases to force them out, also the use of thugs and hooligans to intimidate both vendors and shoppers. In late March 2009, there was a fatal shooting of two market security guards; on 23 March, a stall owner and another guard were assaulted when they shouted abuse at Legal Professional Co.’s chairman Thammanat Prompao who was visiting the market at the time, all despite a heavy police presence.19 By 27 March, the guarding screen of religion had been invoked to protect the market: an area facing Ratchdapisek had been cleared by the community for a shrine to commemorate the fallen security guards. Any frontal attack would have to be through the dedicated area of the shrine and, presumably, through the large police contingent that had taken up position next to it but displaying considerable reluctance to act as protectors. The emblems of Religion and the symbols of Nation were on protective show.20 By early 2010, the shrine had gone, the police presence was removed, the market continued and status quo was seemingly restored. In Thailand, however, nothing ever seems finally resolved, and apprehension, tensions and intermittent violence persisted.21

Informal Settlements, Remnant Villages and Slums Numerous temples of Buddha, with tall spires attached to them, frequently glittering with gilding, were conspicuous among the mean huts and hovels of the natives (John Crawfurd, 1987: 78; first published 1828).

The glittering spires of the present are for the glory of capital rather than the Buddha. The hovels of the natives, however, persist. Bangkok’s slums and informal settlements are hidden from the tourist gaze and mostly obliterated from Thais’ own imaginings of their city. Khlong Toei is only the most dramatic expression of this screened world. Attention should be drawn to two others of its manifestations. First are the khlong communities. The tourists will be taken on boats along Khlong Bangkok Noi to see the old settlements on the water’s edge, or to a barely surviving khlong-side (“floating”) market

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(Ussanee, 2003). These are photogenic; their presentation for the delectation of the tourists is also an instance of the aestheticisation of poverty. Old khlong-edge communities run like veins through the city, mostly unseen from the thanon that intersect them. Chapter 2 recounted the story of the rehabilitation of the community of the east bank of Khlong Bang Bua in the Bangkhen district, under the Baan Man Kong programme. Opposite on the west bank, however, the community has received no such beneficence: houses have been made from whatever discarded materials might be found; they have sunk into the mud as the khlong banks have eroded, some have totally collapsed while others continue to fall apart. Yet they are still occupied. The Ban Bangraonok community in Nonthaburi studied by Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn (2003, 2005) comes nowhere near this level of destruction (Chapter 2). Yet, here too, there is the decay of the khlong and this is a community of economic deprivation and cultural decline. Whereas Ban Bangraonok is spatially isolated from the more diverse Bangkok metropolis, the Thonburi community of Wat Paknam Fang Tai juxtaposes the khlong-side chumchon with the housing estate of muban Rachaville. The latter is a gated community, resolving the problem of sharp social difference by locking the gate. The gated communities, increasingly ubiquitous on the city’s outskirts, together with the equally secured condominium blocks, shopping malls and locked automobiles, become the mechanisms for avoiding the masses of the threatening poor and immigrant waves from the countryside. Fear of “others” emerged in Cuttaleeya’s work as a motivating factor in the middle-class flight to isolation (Cuttaleeya, 2005; Cuttaleeya and King, 2007); Nuttinee Karnchanaporn similarly finds fear as a cultural phenomenon in the Thai middle class, leading to the isolating walls and gates but also, importantly, to the “domestic remedies” of spirit houses, shrines and portraits of favoured kings (Nuttinee, 2004: 109–13). A second form of isolation is represented in Khlong San Saeb, paralleling Sukhumvit. Here, the khlong-side communities are not invisible as this is the route of Bangkok’s water taxi, a public boat service that is a minor part of the city’s public transport. The khlong had been dug in the Rama III period by Malay-Muslim prisoners-of-war who were subsequently permitted to settle along its banks. Their descendents are still there as are other Muslim communities in the khlong areas of the east.

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Figure 4.13 Waterfront settlements: (a) unseen Khlong Bang Bua; (b) highly exposed: the underside of elitist Dusit.

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The spatial differences are palpable. Where Sukyumvit soi 3 (Nana) crosses Khlong San Saeb, there is the entrance to a Muslim khlongside community which is clearly less ordered, greener and more lush than anything visible from the soi (mostly concrete shophouses). While Wandee Pinijvarasin looked at khlong-based communities on the edge of Ayutthaya rather than Bangkok, her observations may be transferable: a Muslim community immediately adjoined a Thai-Buddhist, the uses of space were different and there was very little interchange between the two (Wandee, 2003, 2004). The divisions between Thai, Sino-Thai and Chinese may be glossed over and in many contexts disappear; the Muslim communities, however, mostly remain “outside”. The divisions are not so much socioeconomic as socio-cultural and religious. The extraordinary syncreticism of Siam-Thailand (indeed of Southeast Asia) fails. The visitor to the cultural maelstrom of Kudijeen — Portuguese-Christian, diversely Muslim, royal Buddhist — needs to clear the mind of romantic fantasies of tolerance and cultural acceptance and instead see the hard divisions along the khlong and the isolations. Here is the urban expression of the Centre-South, Buddhist-Muslim, Thai-Malay, government-insurgent division of the nation itself. From the preferred upper levels of the grand hotels along the Maenam Chao Phraya or the splendid condominium blocks of Sukhumvit Sois 22 and 24, the observer’s eye might stray to the vast expanse of the Khlong Toei slums. The juxtaposition is a clear expression of the seemingly unbridgeable rift in Thai society. The two sides of the rift are products of each other. The critic will interpose that the rift is really one between a peasant hinterland (most grossly Isaan and the North) and a progressive, sophisticated urban Bangkok. Yet the cultural and political disintegration is ultimately played out in urban space, most notably the spaces of Bangkok.

The Conditions of Possibility for Destruction The reader of Bangkok’s ruins, whether of the culture itself or of lives of poor women on Ratchadapisek (or Patpong, Nana Plaza, Cowboy) or of the abandoned projects or the forgotten slums, will two questions: first, what are the conditions that have enabled destruction? Second, what are its present consequences? At a superficial level, it may be easy enough to understand greed that lies behind elitist appropriation and the disregard for

the Soi ask the the the

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internally colonised (the refugees from Isaan, the Lao, Mon, hill tribes), still the slave labour of modern Bangkok. Such has always been the case in Siam. There may likewise be little mystery in the cupidity that underlay the absurd investments of the 1990s (Hopewell, Sathorn Unique, SV Garden) or the gross disregard for the externalities (“thirdpart effects”) flowing from so many “developments”. After all, were these not for the benefit of the proponents’ families and are not “family values” pre-eminent in a Thai worldview? The dilemma, however, arises in the context of the religion (humility, the giving of alms, making of merit). There is that idea, in Thai culture, of kreng chai — kindness, consideration. So why has a principle of life so deeply embedded in the culture come to nothing? The answer, however, is obvious: the cultural, moral dimensions of the religion have been submerged beneath the surface — the screen of shrines, spirit houses, ritual and amulets. Perhaps the blame goes back a long way, to Rama III and the endeavour of “royal Buddhism” to suppress “popular Buddhism” — that is, the Buddhism of those who were to be enslaved by the new oppressions of the modern economy. The reader of the city must therefore contemplate the prostitutes and amputees of Sukhumvit and see them as the products of both the globalising economy of the 1990s (and earlier) and the retreat — or is it really an advance — of religion from the realm of morality to the surface of display. There are certainly reformist monks but their voices are rarely heard. Voices of reform, albeit mostly unheeded, tend to come from elsewhere. Thus, in reading the ruins of Bangkok, the beggar, amputee or prostitute needs to be placed against first the little shrine in the go-go bar, the spirit house or the street shrine and, ultimately, the grand wat and the rituals of Nation-King-Religion, for they are conditions of possibility of each other.

Consequences: Red-Shirts, Yellow-Shirts In the early 2000s, there was a vibrant literary industry dealing with the phenomenon of Thaksin Shinawatra and “Thaksinomics”. His downfall in 2006 brought in an era where things happened too quickly for books — instead, the ever-changing account of post-Thaksin Thailand has risen from the Fourth Estate of the press and its literary offspring in the more ephemeral web journals and blogs of the Fifth Estate. Not only

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is the social gulf now colour-coded — made visually explicit in almost every space of the city — but it has also been translated into cyberspace. We are to read the colour-coding as a reference to two spaces. First, there is the physical space of social division — the Sukhumvit soi of the elite against the slums of Khlong Toei and the girls from Isaan in the go-go bars. Second is the space of the blogs and web journals that constantly throw into doubt all previous meanings inhering in the physical spaces of the city, even challenging the most transcendent institutions of Nation-King-Religion. It may seem idealistically romantic to suggest a positive role for the Khlong Toei slums. Bruce Missingham (2003), however, has written on the Assembly of the Poor, a non-government organisation that functions as a coalition of rural villagers and urban slum dwellers affected by the Thai unquestioning, fanatical pursuit of “development”. It was established in December 1995, bringing together villagers affected by the Pak Mun dam project, subsequently joined by people affected by other projects and by urban workers suffering from industrial injuries.22 One of its founders was Vanida Tantiwittayapitak who was one of the Thammasat University students who fled Bangkok following the 1976 massacre. The Assembly of the Poor is more putative than effective; yet its impact is to highlight the common interests of the developmentdisadvantaged poor whether of the villages or the urban slums. When it is further realised that the denizens of the slums are in large measure refugees from the countryside and its villages, one comes to a surprising conclusion: this is a bridge between city and countryside in an increasingly divided society. While all may wear red shirts rather than yellow, what unites is not blind loyalty to a self-serving demagogue but the common concern of victims. This more promising form of protest is also written on the space of Bangkok: in 1997, the Assembly of the Poor mounted a 99-day protest on Sanam Luang and outside Government House. The effect was to bring the village to the city, with the protest named the “Village of the Poor” — in the city of the affluent (Needel, 2005: 321). The events of April–May 2010, however, may be proof that the potential of the Assembly of the Poor had failed to be realised.

A Concluding Note It is clear enough to attribute the visual pollution represented in a landscape such as Ratchadapisek to the evils of a “fourth level” of colonisa-

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tion, namely that of the modern erosion of the culture itself, however defined. The leap from the Vegasing of Ratchadapisek (or Soi Cowboy) to the ruins of post-1997 Bangkok must, however, seem tenuous — is not the corruption and the venality of greed underlying the ruins as much Thai as neo-colonially imported? The explanation must rest in the (Thai) worldview that uncritically accepts the imperfection of the material world and its ephemerality. There is a curious comment from a respected American architect with substantial Thailand experience: Maybe for us they’re great eyesores, because Americans can’t deal with things that are unresolved. But Asian cultures understand the world isn’t perfect … everything isn’t always finished. [The abandoned buildings are] poetic … not completely boring to look at, especially when things start growing out of them.23

What, however, might be a Thai perception of this carnage of the culture? Is this just the Western romanticisation of ruins, akin to the aestheticisation of poverty, or is it more to be seen as a reflective, critical interrogation of a culture and of its built environment? In discussions with Thai observers, by contrast, the ruins will be imagined away; or if acknowledged, the answer will be simple: of course they will be completed.24 They are merely passing. A more enigmatic comment attributed to a Silpakorn University lecturer: “Thai architecture is the minor wife’s children”.25 It is not quite the offspring from prostitution, yet it is the inevitable progeny of the service to capital. The prostitution — of both women in the massage establishment or of politicians and of families in the corruption of urban development — manifests a destructive acceptance. The Vegas imagery, the failed emulations of Western urban exploitation and the proliferating megamalls, hypermarkets and franchises manifest the erosions of culture. So, why is this so? For some hint of an explanation, we come back to the question of epistemology — the construction of a worldview — alluded to in Chapter 1. We return to it in the chapter that follows.

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Chapter 5

Landscapes of the Mind and the Fifth Level of Colonisation The Universities

The fifth level of the (neo-)colonisation of Thailand and of Asia more widely is that of the mind — of the ways that knowledge is socially constructed. The language wars of the 20th century saw the emergence of English as the one medium of global communication, although the “fatality of human linguistic diversity” — the way that a language takes on different regional characteristics (Anderson, 1991: 42–3) — would seem to ensure its subsequent fragmentation. Thailand, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, is caught in the new linguistic colonisation. Linguistic colonisation facilitates discursive colonisation — my knowledge is better than yours, so you had better listen to me! — although the two are distinct. At the level of discourse, there is always the question: colonisation by whom? It is ultimately the question of invasive epistemologies: one way of constructing knowledge invades another. It is a colonisation, however, that may also be seen positively: whenever one sphere of thought invades another, both can gain. While this chapter is still concerned with space, it is also more concerned with ideas and ways of thinking than has been the case with the chapters preceding. As in previous chapters, the first section is about production; in this case, it is the production of knowledge about space. The second is unequivocally about space and its reading — more specifically about the language of architecture that endows meaning to the space of the city. How is one to read the architecture of the city — what does it tell us about the ongoing (re-)construction of a Thai identity? 166

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1. Epistemic Colonisation Epistemologies: The Discursive Constructions of Reality Edward Said suggests that the most direct way to understand different constructions of reality in the (Asian) colonised world is via a comparison of the English versus the French experiences of “the Orient”. In Orientalism, Said traces the genealogy of the distinctively different discursive formations of “the Orient” for the British and French in the 19th century, the era of their confrontation with Ramas IV and V. So for the English speaking traveller, … the Orient was India, of course, an actual British possession; to pass through the Near Orient was therefore to pass en route to a major colony. Already, then, the room available for imaginative play was limited by the realities of administration, territorial legality, and executive power.

Thus, for English writers, “the Orient was defined by material possession, by a material imagination, as it were.” The English, however, had defeated Napoleon and evicted France; so in consequence and in contrast, … the French pilgrim was imbued with a sense of acute loss in the Orient. He came there to a place in which France, unlike Britain, had no sovereign presence. The Mediterranean echoed with the sound of French defeats, from the Crusades to Napoleon. What was to become known as “la mission civilisatrice” began in the nineteenth century as a political second best to Britain’s presence (1979: 169).

In the case of the French, we have “the literary pilgrims, beginning with Chateaubriand [1768–1848], who found in the Orient a locale sympathetic to their private myths, obsessions, and requirements” (1979: 170). For the French, the Orient was about themselves. For the English, there is a detachment — objects of analysis and ultimately management. While the Said distinction can be seen as somewhat reductionist, it has value as a sensitising device in one’s questioning the conditions enabling discourse on the city and its spaces. The French presence in Siam in the 17th and 18th centuries (the Ayutthaya period) was far more vigorous than that of the English, albeit intermittent and usually shortlived, and more directed towards the advancement, ambivalently, of the Enlightenment project (Van Der Cruysse, 2002).1 Significantly, the French Bishop Garnault, in 1796, established a small printing press in Santa Cruz Church to print teaching

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books in the Thai language but in Romanised letters (Committee of 80 Years of Santa Cruz Church, n.d.: 89). The balance began to tilt in the 19th century: the Bowring Treaty of 1855 opened the country to European trade (and hence the “third space” of Charoen Krung) and the mind of King Mongkut to Britain as the world’s dominant power and engine of modernisation. Language, argues Foucault in The Order of Things (1970), enables (constrains) what we can say, and hence what enters into discursive formations; and while both French and English were vehicles for Siam-Thailand’s trade in knowledge and ideas in the 20th century and in the imagining of its own paths to modernisation, it was instrumentalist English rather than speculative (self-critical) French discourse that came to dominate. English became the language of the Siam Society, of a “quality press” (Bangkok Post, The Nation), and of the myriad books — on Thailand and its culture as on all else — that line the bookshop shelves. Of the texts that would “understand” (interpret, distort) the country’s history and culture and explain it back to the Thais for their information and edification, the majority are in English (the French are largely missing) and from English, American and Australian authors. The attention, incidentally, fails to be reciprocated: Thai authors, for the most part, do not similarly interrogate the West. This linguistic domination underlies not so much the erosion of the city and its imagery (Soi Cowboy, Rachadapisek) as the way in which the city and its spaces can be talked about and thereby come to be understood — to enter into the wider, more globalist discourse of the social production of the spaces of the city. It is that discourse, part of the wider discursive formation underlying the culture itself (see Tanabe, 1991; Tanabe and Keyes, 2002), which will be the concern of the arguments to follow.

The Question of a Thai Episteme The question of a Thai way of producing and understanding knowledge has been explored previously (King, 2008a). There are specific aspects of such a way of constructing knowledge that need to be brought to the fore in the present context of “epistemic differences”. Chapter 1 has observed the Buddhist understanding of four realms of existence. At the highest, there is that of pure, transcendent virtue and wisdom. Beneath that, though linked to it, is a “trustworthy” realm of the family, home and domestic virtue. Beneath that again, below the trustworthy sphere of family virtue, is untrustworthy, uncertain and potentially dangerous

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power. Then, at the lowest level, is chaos and evil. One effect of this fourfold distinction is that it throws light on the production of the built fabric of the city. Given the structure of Thai capitalism, the corporation is to be seen as an extension of the family — thereby located in that second, trustworthy, virtuous sphere. I might send thugs to clear the poor from “my” land, wreck havoc on the locale, cheat and scheme; however, it is forever for a righteous, higher good of the well-being and prosperity of my family — hence, virtuous. Those who might attempt to constrain me — through planning, or regulations, or the courts — belong in that lower, less trustworthy realm of power and politics. To comment on property development thus runs the risk of being a criticism of the goodness of families and a defence of untrustworthy power. The English understanding of reality has prevailed in Thailand, though not without challenge. The challenge has mostly been expressed in the strengthening of that Thai “regime of surfaces and screens” (Chapter 3), most notably in the official cult of Nation-King-Religion energetically promoted in the post-1946 (Rama IX) period, more specifically in the era dominated by Sarit Thanarat (Prime Minister 1958– 1963). The reality of modernist thought — and the physical reality of Bangkok’s loss of old characteristics of a green, religiously respectful, hierarchically ordered, “Thai” world — was to be submerged beneath the screens. All this is to be seen as a tendency to horizontal (surface) thought: there is an obligation not to look beneath the officially sanctioned surface. At a popular level, all is challenged, however, by the inquisitorial and “open” culture of international journalism; at a deeper level, there is the challenge from “English” structuralist thought — a Thai “horizontalist” episteme stands against the imperative of “efficiency” understood in positivist terms. The “efficiency” of IMF thinking in 1997–1998 was just such a case of epistemic as well as ideological invasion. At an arguably even deeper level, there is always the mostly unexpressed challenge of the French speculative tradition. The most damning charge against these intellectual traditions, however, is that in Thailand they have ceased to challenge, cowed by the imagined imperatives of “cultural sensitivity” and the decidedly less imaginary fears of Thai laws of lèse majesté. There is always also the screen of politeness and the practice of kreng chai — caring, consideration, kindness, helpfulness (Suntaree, 1985: 179–80). Suntaree Komin’s landmark study of Thai value systems

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placed Thai values in nine clusters on a continuum of highest to lowest in psychological importance. At the top of the hierarchy is (1) ego orientation; then (2) grateful relationship orientation; and (3) smooth interpersonal relationship orientation. Thus, all three of these orientations are essentially towards the self. The highest of these, ego orientation, clustered three fundamental values: “face-saving” value, “criticism avoidance” value and then “considerate kreng chai” (Suntaree, 1990: 133). Kreng chai, accordingly, finds its place in the context of values focused on the self and on “face” — surfaces, appearances. David Young’s somewhat salacious novel Sukhumvit Road makes reference to “Sex shows and fireplaces, lady drinks and lawnmowers, hookers and home appliances, Sukhumvit and the suburbs” (Young, 2005: 361). The implication is that Western memory is categorised in polarities. Different sorts of dichotomies preoccupy Turton and Manas (1991: 11): “We … moved away from a residual structuralist attraction to oppositions or dichotomies. We started with some a priori oppositions of our own: local/elite, center/periphery, court/popular, male/ female, power/impotence, legitimate/illegitimate, attraction/repulsion and so on.” However, M.R. Pumin Varavarn observes that this systematic epistemology of dialectical opposites is different from how Thais see the world. Thais tend to see in grey (not black or white) as though they are practising “krengjai” [kreng chai] sometimes although not most of the time; they do not neatly view things as either “good” or “bad”. However, Thais understand much better the distinction between “happy” and “sad”. In other words, Thais appear to be less focused on rational thinking and tend more towards an emotional response to the world around them (Pumin, 2007a: 66).

Also running through a “modern” Thai worldview is the seemingly universal fear of the universal. So Craig Reynolds writes of “The cult of imitation”: that “the common theme, in the pessimistic assessment of globalization among Thai intellectuals, is of a homogenized universal culture that raises the political issue of whether that universal culture will overwhelm and dominate the local culture” (in Kahn, 1998: 130–1). Typical of Reynolds’ “Thai intellectuals” is the Chiang Mai historian Nidhi Eoseewong, expressing alarm at the spread of a global culture that he identifies as predominantly European. He sees it as exhibiting three characteristics: hegemony, meaning that no country or community can avoid its influence; dissolution of borders, so that local institutions may

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lose control over decisions that are now made elsewhere; and virtually instantaneous communication (Nidhi, 1994: 92). Further, “[i]n the age of globalization, there is more danger in imitating European models [kanlork tamra farang] than we have ever realized” (1994: 94). Is there also a “class” inflection in the social production of a modern Thai worldview? In a study of Sukhumvit and its subsisting cultures, M.R. Pumin Varavarn has drawn attention to two very different literary traditions. Por Intalapalit (1910–1968) wrote in the 1950s and 1960s, creating popular stories and characters merely to earn a living and considering himself beneath the social standing of any literary elite (Veena, 2006). His writings were contemporary with those of Vor Na Pramulmart (1920–1977), a granddaughter of Rama V, who indirectly embraced a sophisticated, inter-textual analysis of her society. Both addressed the differences and rifts between working (or unemployed) Thais and elite groups in the context of a changing, traditionalist society and of different understandings of globalisation in Thai society of that time. Vor Na Pramulmart’s stories were set against the backdrop of Phloenchit and Sukhumvit with its elite lifestyles alongside its ricefields (in the 1950s and 1960s). Por’s stories, on the other hand, were more in a context of “ordinary” Thai common sense, humour and irony — he especially portrayed bandit romances (Pumin, 2007a: 92): … the bandit community is a free society which has escaped from state power (Nidhi, 2005: 365).

Such a depiction of the bandit community could refer to both Sukhumvit’s under-class of vendors, prostitutes and beggars as well as its “over-class” of property “developers”. Both account for an urban space whose overwhelming characteristic is disorder.2

Incommensurate Cultures Disorder feeds into the “moral panic” of society. In earlier times, there was always the rift between the mu’ang, the civilised, reassuring citystate of the valley and the dichotomous pa thu’an, the forested land outside the city-state, filled with alien spirits and populated by non-Tai people (Stott, 1991; Rhum, 1987). In introducing the increasingly significant community culture (wathanatham chumchon) school of thought in Thailand, Chatthip Nartsupha refers to the work and ideas of Niphot Thianwihan, a

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Catholic priest who has worked in community development with Karen mountain people and subsequently with lowland Thai villages. Niphot stressed that if a local community’s culture is “strong”, it can organise itself to resist external currents and exploitation: “the community has its own mechanism of cultural reproduction … Being practised over such a long time, it has become ritualised, as ritual accompaniment to the community” (Chatthip, 1991: 119; Parnwell, 2006).3 A variation on Niphot’s ideas on cultural persistence in the Thai countryside comes in those of Bamrung Bunpanya, emphasising the phenomenon of “two currents in culture” (Bamrung Bunpanya in Seri, 1986). One is village culture, the focus of Niphot’s work; the other is capitalist culture. Modern Thailand, for Bumrung, follows an imported, capitalist way of development, geared to supply the needs of Westerners and ultimately linked with internal state power. “The more development there is, the poorer we are”, as the only people who get rich are those who serve the Westerners and who tend to imitate the Westerners (Chatthip, 1991: 120–2). Bamrung singles out the middle class “for acting as agents and disseminators of imported western values and a profit-oriented lifestyle … they should instead orient themselves toward the farmers’ lifestyle, interests and concerns” (Noulmook, 1996). It is not too difficult to see such thinking as partly underlying the election of the populist Thaksin and one aspect of the subsequent political divide. The community culture school is centred around the northeast, more specifically in Bangkok-colonised Chiang Mai which is also the Thaksin power base. It is the sort of consciousness expressed by Niphot, Bumrung and Chatthip that Thaksin awakened more widely in the non-Bangkok world. It is worth noting that the movement has been criticised on grounds of being ideological, a case of “false consciousness” and a manifestation of resistance to globalisation (Yoshihide, 1998; Hewison, 2000). Such analysis can be extended from village to city, where the intrusion of Western economy and values is overwhelming, as is the imitation of Western patterns of consumption. Further, in the city, there is no clear set of surviving cultural practices that can be mustered as a basis for resistance and cultural survival in Niphot’s sense. Hence, one might argue that the countryside may have retained something of mu’ang while the city has become pa — the alien, threatening world of the outsiders. Apichat Tho’ngyu has argued that “the way of the village” still exists and the proof of its continuity is in people’s present dissatisfaction: they may have to accept capitalism while in their hearts they

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remain disturbed and opposed (Chatthip, 1991: 122) — the nostalgia reported in the remnant-traditional communities of Bangkok (in the work of Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn in Chapter 2) may be seen as one manifestation; the grassroots fury of the red-shirts may be another. There may be yet another transposition of mu’ang and pa. In a 4 March 2002 comment in Bangkok’s The Nation, Chang Noi (Little Elephant) speaks of “moral panic” that has risen sharply in recent times. So there is still “the fear of the wild” (pa) but to an urban middle class that has been “struggling to build a secure world, governed by rules and laws, where things are predictable and reasonable”, there are the new wilds inhabited by “godfathers, tricky businessmen and powerful people”, the denizens of the informal or illegal economy. Then, there is the moral panic about sex, the generational shift and the world of the night market, so now it is external culture that presents as pa (Chang Noi, 2009: 170–2). Philip Stott’s analysis of mu’ang and pa has emphasised that, in ancient times, there was indeed a bridge between the two worlds of different peoples, values, practices and spirits, in the form of the forest dwelling monks (aranyawasi). There were various grades of forest dwelling ranging from permanent to seasonal and from hermits to participation in formal forest monasteries. Although the practice of forest dwelling was ancient, it assumed an increasingly important role in the Sukhothai period (c. 1240–1438), as the forest monasteries were used by kings to control the power and wealth of the urban elite, as well as to bring Buddhism to prevail in the pa thu’an. Some of these monasteries were just outside the city walls and hence well within the civilised world of the mu’ang, while others were in the outer world of the forest proper. Hence, the bridge was geographic — overlain on both worlds — as well as institutional. Further, the bridge still works at some levels: forest monasteries and their monks are assuming an increasing role in nature conservation in modern Thailand (Stott, 1991: 146–8; Yoshihide, 2000). If there were bridges between the mu’ang and pa in the past, one is led to ask where one might seek bridges across the rifts of the present. Chatthip Nartsupha, writing in 1991, could cite Bamrung Bunpanya’s expectation that bridges are to be found in the bourgeoisie. Their role was seen as threefold: to channel and disseminate village culture to the middle class itself, to redistribute resources from urban to rural areas, and to oppose state pressure on village life and economy (Chatthip, 1991: 120–2). Such a hope must now be seen as forlorn. The effect of

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the Thaksin era’s awakening of a now irreversible political consciousness in the rural poor has been matched, as an equally irreversible reaction, by a reformed political consciousness in the middle class. There has been a qualitative shift in the social divide and the urban middle class is more part of the problem than of any solution. Another candidate for bridging the social and cultural gaps might be the universities. Here too, however, there are inhibiting factors.

The Universities Thai universities are latecomers. The first university (Chulalongkorn) was only founded in 1916, by the “English” King Vajiravudh — he was the first king of Siam to have attended university — and in the English tradition. The second university, Thammasat, was of less conventional establishment. It was founded in 1934 by Pridi Banomyong, then Minister of Interior, as an open university named University of Moral and Political Sciences to follow the sixth principle of the 1932 Siamese anti-monarchist coup d’état, to the effect that one “must provide the people with full education” because people “lack education, which is reserved for royalties” (Pridi, 2000: 70–2). The 8 November 1947 coup ended Pridi’s leadership of the university; he went into exile (to China and France, for 34 years) and the university’s structure was “normalised”. Chulalongkorn and Thammasat remain the most prestigious of Thailand’s universities. Other universities followed. Mention must be made of Mahidol University. Siam’s first medical school, the Rajapaethayalai, was founded by King Rama V in 1889 on the site of the previous Rear Palace (now the site of the Siriraj Hospital), subsequently becoming part of Chulalongkorn University in 1916. The government of General Phibun reorganised the Faculty of Medicine together with Dentistry, Pharmacy and Veterinary Science from Chulalongkorn University as the University of Medical Sciences, founded in 1943. On 21 February 1969, King Rama IX declared the name of the university to be changed to Mahidol University to honour his father. It remains strongly linked to the Thai monarchy. The Phibun reforms of 1943 also underlay the foundation of Silpakorn University by Italian Corrado Feroci (Silpa Bhirasri) as the fine arts and archaeology university, and of Kasetsart University as the country’s agricultural science university. While still part of the Ministry of Agriculture, the latter had in 1939 moved from Chiang Mai (where it had been established as an agriculture school in 1904) to its present campus in Bangkok’s Bangkhen district.

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A key figure in the cultural opening of Siam in the 1930s was M.L. Manich Jumsai (1908–2009), who pioneered the dictionaries — ThaiEnglish-Thai, Thai-French-Thai and Thai-German-Thai.4 In 1940, while working in the Ministry of Education, he founded the Teachers’ Training College which eventually became Rajabhat University. He was also instrumental in the foundation of Sri Nakarindravivoj University, in resurrecting the Royal Institute from oblivion and in the move for universal education (Manich, 1951). From 1950, M.L. Manich worked at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and used this as a base for tracing 17th- to 19th-century documents and rare books on Siam, scouring libraries in Paris, London and other European centres. One consequence of this activity was that he assembled the largest collection of 17thcentury books, manuscripts, maps and other documents on Siam.5 M.L. Manich also became arguably the first historian to draw popular attention to the historical links between Siam and the West. It is questionable, however, whether this attention has led Thai scholars to the intensive reflection on these links that might enable their effects on a modern Thai episteme to be similarly reflected upon. It is noteworthy that the discourse on Thai constructions of knowledge seems to be dominated by Western scholars, most recently in an Anglophone tradition. The consequence is one aspect of the epistemic colonisation of Thailand. So, why is the Western (intellectually colonising) gaze towards Thailand so rarely reciprocated in the discourse of Thai scholars? One answer might be that the preoccupation with epistemology, constructions of knowledge and worldviews is itself deeply embedded in Western thought. Thus, “exotic” Thailand becomes a rich field for Western speculation, whereas there is no tradition for a reverse gaze — the Thais, for the most part, do not similarly critique the West. A second answer would draw attention to a Thai eschewing of critical thought. The universities, in particular, are paralysed by a Thai culture of self-censorship: there is to be no deep analysis of political malaise (the rigour of “the law” obstructing critique), of what lies beneath the production of the built environment (the meritorious realm of “the family”), of what the screens and surfaces might be masking (the obligations to forget and to imagine “properly”). There is the bitter diagnosis of journalist Voronai Vanijaka: Since we’ve gotten into the habit of not questioning, then naturally our brains have not had the practice of forming thoughts and opinions in order to pose questions. Since we’re lacking in thoughts and opinions, we’re easily susceptible to manipulation, exploitation and downright

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brainwashing. Since we’re conditioned to being manipulated, exploited and brainwashed, we become very good at obeying the status quo, the powers that be. Since we are very good at obeying, we become used to it, so we rarely ever question anything, and hence we are neither worldly nor informed (Voronai, 2009).

The paralysis of reflective, critical thought and the effects of a consequent self-imposed intellectual isolation are richly manifested in the planning and architecture of the city.

The Planning of the City The failure of planning — more properly, the apolitical, asocial delusions of planning and the failure of development control — has been examined in Chapter 4. One of the most extraordinary aspects of Bangkok is its bewildering, seemingly random scattering of high-rise offices, condominium blocks, hotels, hospitals and the like. Certainly within the vast expanse of the city covered by the fixed-rail transport system, they can occur intermingled with housing estates, the residential compounds of the elite, separate houses, lines of shophouses, informal settlements, inappropriately at the end of a narrow soi or along a trafficjammed thanon. No planning rationale seems ever to underlie their locations. The story of Khlong Bang Bua, recounted in Chapter 2, could be a metaphor for the planning of the metropolis itself. It was noted that the Baan Man Kong imposition of a gridded redevelopment on a chaotic, typically Thai informal settlement was “based on persuasion more than compulsion”. It is a phrase that applies broadly to Thai planning. Sidh Sintusingha has drawn my attention to a 1980s case of a Muslim community being labelled “unpatriotic” for successfully resisting an “advised” tollway exit through their settlement; when the BTS was under construction along Sukhumvit in the 1990s, the developer was virtually begging for connections to commercial premises along its route, altogether unsuccessfully. It was only after the BTS operated and the clear benefits were inescapable that the skywalks, now suspended beneath it to give access to the malls and other premises, were called for. In places with a strong planning tradition (Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong), these could easily have been publicly prescribed. In Thailand, however, planning is seemingly always merely “advisory”. The periodically gridlocked roads produce unpredictability: to plan one’s use of time can be futile. The possibility of spending hours in

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one’s car for the journey to or from school or work carries heavy costs psychologically and on family life and national productivity. Bello et al. (1998: 98–9) quote from a 1993 study by Helen Ross based on interviews of Bangkok residents trying to maintain some semblance of a fulfilling life in the face of a seemingly total collapse of the urban system. The greatest impact is on people’s time, thereby on family life and health. People leave home at extraordinarily early hours in the hope of a smoother ride; children will be fed, dressed, do homework in the back of the car in attempts to get them to and from school; there is little time left for family, home, a social life, recreation. Different people have different opportunities for coping with these impacts — the riders in air-conditioned cars versus those in crowded, un-air-conditioned buses. So great sacrifices will be made to secure such a car (Ross, 1993). The new highways and the new rail systems will have helped some people; the expansion of the city will have made it worse for others. The unequal distribution of costs will have become more unequal. Bangkok does, however, have instances of relatively coherent planning. The highway system, the BTS and the MRT are certainly planned as are the hoped-for extensions of these. There is also effective development control over the old city of Rattanakosin. There are planning “intentions” for much of the rest of the city: as a specific example, there is the goal of concentrating activity at the intersections of major thanon or at BTS and MRT nodes, rather than sprawling along the thanon or embedded in a scarcely accessible soi (Chapter 4). While there are some such concentrations — Siam Square where the two BTS lines intersect, the intersection of Sukhumvit and Ratchadapisek/Asoke which is also an interchange point for the BTS and MRT — the sprawl is far more in evidence. The failure is not so much in the planning intention as in the implementation and the requisite development control. Although planning is always political, its corruption can be an immensely lucrative pastime, especially for politicians and bureaucrats. It is instructive to observe that it was just such an alleged corruption of the land acquisition and development system that was used by the anti-Thaksin movement to have him criminally convicted, thereby legitimising his banishment from politics. It is also interesting that the specific instance related to land on Thanon Ratchadapisek. While the facts of this case are in dispute and may remain so for decades, the story at its simplest is that Khunying Potjaman, then the wife of then Prime Minister Thaksin, in 2006 bought a tract of land of some 33 rai (5.28 hectares) from the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF) for

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an allegedly low price of 772 million baht. Thaksin was subsequently charged with corruptly using his office to ensure a low price, found guilty and convicted. The Office of the Attorney General instructed the FIDF to recover the land and so the matter went into the civil court system where it could languish for a long time.6

Languages of Architecture It is noteworthy that Ramas V and VI were sharply alert to the political power of architecture. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this awareness is not in Bangkok but in the respective palaces that they commissioned in Phetchaburi. Chulalongkorn (Rama V) commissioned Phra Ram Ratchanivej, the “Gunner Palace” so labelled for its location in a military encampment. The Jugendstijl or Art Nouveau styling and the German references would suggest a European leaning counter to the English and French inroads into Siam while also representing a Siam engaged with the latest movements in Western thought and culture (Duke, 1962a, 1962b; Sompong, 2007b). More on the preferred styles of Rama V follow below. It is worth noting, however, that Rama V also encouraged well-designed vernacular architecture as a “Royal Preferred Style” for commoners’ housing (Aasen, 1998: 139). If external threat motivated the modernism of King Chulalongkorn, it was more internal hazards that underlay that of the next reign. Vajiravudh (Rama VI) used the design of his “Beach-front Palace”, Phra Thinang Phisansakhhon, to assert his nationalist agenda: the form of the traditional, stilted Thai house, shaded and open to the breeze, was translated to modern technology and applied to a vast, sprawling complex as a demonstration of the modern potency of tradition. The Thai referencing also needs to be observed in the context of Vajiravudh’s nationalism, conservatism and somewhat auto-contradictory attacks on the Chinese (he was himself part Chinese) (Vella, 1978; Sompong, 2007a). Note, however: Vajiravudh’s attack was not so much on the Chinese as Chinese. He distinguished between good Chinese who settled in Siam, honoured the king and paid taxes, and bad Chinese who did not care about the place, participated in strikes and took their wages “home” to China. A particular representation of modernity was applied in the 1940s to the buildings to line Thanon Ratchadamnoen (attributed to Pum Malakul as architect),7 to form Bangkok’s most sustained essay in urban design: a simplified Art Deco styling was applied to a grand avenue of

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standardised office buildings. Ratchadamnoen, meaning royal walk or passage, had in the Rama V period been just that — a passage for the royal progress from the Grand Palace to the new royal residence of the Chitralada Palace in Dusit, beyond the old city. Its reconstruction in the 1940s was equally political in intention, namely to erase the royal city and the nation’s memory of it, as recounted in Chapter 2. With the eclipse of the monarchy after 1932, the representational power of architecture was mobilised in the service of the new regime. A key figure in the era of Phibun Songkram’s increasingly fascist domination was Luang Wichit Wathakan (1898–1962), Head of the Fine Arts Department from 1934 to 1942 and Foreign Minister during the Second World War (Barmé, 1993; Pumin, 2007a: 16; Peleggi, 2007: 121). Wichit, of a rural background, benefited from access to education and overseas diplomatic experience to be able to see Siam in a global context; he became a writer, prolific playwright, propagandist, master of the new mass communication medium of radio, nationalist and advocate of a new, modern Thai culture. The Fine Arts Department became the instrument to mould this reinvented, post-absolutist culture. He especially admired Mussolini as the model of a great, nation-forming leader and wrote two studies of him. His Fine Arts Department employed Corrado Feroci, an Italian sculptor trained in the monumental classicist style favoured by Mussolini and initially engaged by King Vajiravudh in 1923 to teach artists. He was given the Thai name of Silpa Bhirasri. On Phibun’s and Wichit’s instruction, Feroci worked on the design of the Constitution (Democracy) Monument (1939) to serve as a new centrepiece for Thanon Ratchadamnoen, negating the absolutist-age idea of the Royal Way. The monument featured a sculpture of Thao Suranari, the legendary female defender of Korat against Anuvong’s Lao invaders in 1828 (Chapter 1). Another bas-relief depicted the villagers of Bang Rajan who fought against the Burmese in 1767. What is especially significant about these bas-reliefs is that they brought the ordinary people and brave soldiers into official depictions instead of mythical beings and great kings. Further, those ordinary Siamese and the guiding military are shown as martial defenders of The Nation. The stridently militarist theme in what purported to be a monument to a constitution merely reflected the reality, as did its Mussolini genealogy. Phibun admired both Hitler and Mussolini as great leaders able to re-define their nations, to mobilise propaganda and the media in that re-definition and, incidentally, able to mobilise the spaces of their

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Figure 5.1 Victory Monument and the grand sweep of the BTS Skytrain.

respective capitals in representing the new reality of The Nation (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 132–3). With the Second World War fall of Paris to the Germans and the Japanese invasion of French Indochina, Phibun seized the opportunity to send his army into French Cambodia to grab territory. The clashes were somewhat inconclusive, the Japanese intervened to broker a settlement and Thailand was awarded two bits of territory. Phibun proclaimed victory thereby to reverse the shame of territorial losses in the Rama V period, staged parades and commissioned a Victory Monument on the grandly planned rond point (traffic circle) at the intersection of Thanons Phya Thai/Phahonyothin and Ratchawithi. Again, Corrado Feroci’s sculptures were called up to give expression to the glory of the occasion. As the BTS Skytrain runs above Phaya Thai and Phahonyothin, one of Bangkok’s stranger pieces of planning is the wide semicircular detour that the train must make along the eastern side of the rond point. The vast scale of the intrusion and its asymmetry tend to compromise what is already a somewhat compromised monument to the aggression of a fascist dictatorship.

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In 1933, there was the royalist Boworadet rebellion against the revolutionary People’s Party government. This led, in October 1936, to the Monument for the Suppression of the Boworadet Rebellion in the Laksi neighbourhood, also known as the Monument for the Defence of the Constitution. In July 2009, there were moves to demolish the monument to make way for a highway overpass, in part justified because it was allegedly of little religious or artistic value and only a symbol of the struggle for democracy. There was also a proposal in 2010 to demolish the Administrative Court building on the eastern side of Sanam Luang, a major symbol of the People’s Party on Rattanakosin island. Both threats provoked strong reactions, especially in the context of an ongoing reassessment of both the People’s Party and its art and architecture (Chatri, 2004, 2009; Chua, 2010). Chatri Prakitnonthakan has been especially significant in this reassessment. In a review of Chatri’s The Art and Architecture of the People’s Party, however, Lawrence Chua has commented on Chatri’s difficulty in articulating the relationship of that architecture to the history of modern architecture more broadly. Chua suggests, instead, that the People’s Party architecture “did not participate in a conversation with European modern architecture as either an equal partner or a slavish imitator” (Chua, 2010: 3). The People’s Party would signify the break from the royal-absolutist age through an architecture that was clearly derived from European Art Deco with its diverse industrial-modernist antecedents and significations, while their sculpture owed much to National Socialist models which, in turn, found their origins in distortions of Western Classicism. However, there seems to have been little reflection on the appropriateness of such imagery for non-Western, recently feudal and still peasant-rural Siam. One can only conclude that there was indeed a “radical break” to be signified through the media of art and architecture but that, as in the past, it would be at the level of surfaces; there would be no discursive reflection.

The Monuments and Protest Feroci’s Constitution (Democracy) Monument became the protest siteof-choice for a generation of Bangkok’s political demonstrators (Dovey, 2001). Then, on Thursday 9 March 2009, the Victory Monument supplanted the Democracy Monument’s pre-eminence: in the fury of Thailand’s political and social disintegration, the UDD red-shirts blocked all roads into the monument’s rond point, thereby effectively

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strangling the city. A consequence of Bangkok’s system of super-blocks and relatively very few major roads is that there are intersections which, if blocked, can cripple the city. The Democracy Monument is not one of those sites, though its neutralisation can do great damage, but the Victory Monument is such a site. The lesson delivered by the PAD yellow-shirt capture of Bangkok’s international airports in 2008 was that the tactic was no longer representational but one of total social and economic destruction. It would always have been very difficult to repeat the airport capture as “the authorities” would have been forewarned (and the authorities were, for the most part, in some sympathy with the yellow-shirt PAD); so the UDD, for their crippling blow on the society, had to find some other point of weakness.8 The Victory Monument has another advantage over that to Democracy: the area of the rond point is much vaster and can therefore hold a much larger number of protesters. It is also assured of a continual audience as the BTS Skytrain performs its sweeping semi-circular semiorbit of both monument and rond point. When the UDD red-shirts then migrated from the Victory Monument to Pattaya on 11 April 2009, with their subsequent defeat of Thailand’s role as president of the ASEAN summit, they effectively destroyed the glory of The Nation represented in the once-glorified monument. Architectural languages inevitably carry political messages. The modernist, International Style settings of corporate capitalism concentrated around the Ratchaprasong intersection were captured in April 2010 and then destroyed on 19 May. Architecture signifies the structures of power in a society that no screens can mask. The attacks on places can thus be read as attacks on significations — on messages.

Silpakorn In 1943, Feroci (Silpa) became Foundation Dean of Silpakorn University, in effect established as the propagating instrument of Wichit’s Fine Arts Department. Its mission was, through teaching, to mobilise the arts in the promotion of nationalism. Traditional art forms and practices would be preserved; its architecture and related schools would ensure that the skills to build, rebuild and renovate wat and palaces would be maintained and that the new schools, government facilities and public institutions would be represented in appropriately Thai forms. Wichit’s view of the place of the arts in the construction of the nation (though never in its questioning or critique), allied with Feroci’s imported ideas and

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imagery from Italian fascism, conformed with an essentially conservative Thai epistemology and had the effect of reinforcing an equally conservative ideology of nationalism. The architecture of the post-1945 era must be described as almost invariably banal. Undistinguished government buildings would be given appliqué roofs of traditional form, sometimes also window hoods or other elements reminiscent of the past. Commercial buildings were mostly rows of identical, usually four-storeyed shophouses or else plain boxes; their only adornment might come from the advertising boards festooning them. Exceptions could be distinctly embarrassing: an example is the Department of Law Enforcement on the Thonburi bank of the Maenam Chao Phraya — a plain modernist box “distinguished” with a pseudo-traditional roof and some minor window details. Almost completely absent were signs of experimentation (for example, with low-energy ways of managing climate), reinterpretation of traditional forms (what, for example, is one to learn from the old, tiered roof forms; what might new, lightweight construction techniques suggest for the building of a “modern” viharn for a wat ?) or attempts to translate ideas of Western modernism (high modernist or, subsequently, postmodernist styling) onto a Thai idea of its own culture. This absence in Thai architectural discourse becomes especially striking when seen against the vigour of both practice and discourse in neighbouring Malaysia (King, 2008b). There are a few built exceptions. The very elegant Millenium Hilton Hotel on the Chao Phraya river might be dismissed as relatively standard International Style; however, in its micro-spaces of entrance, lobbies and gardens, it displays a fine sensitivity to a light, airy, Thai-domestic tradition, all achieved here with the most modern of technology. Sumet Jumsai’s restyling of the Plaza Athénée hotel is similarly elegant in its use of technology.

The Parliament House Competition From 1933, the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall served for the Thai Parliament. The present modernist, “International Style” complex discretely sheltered behind the grandeur of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall — behind the royal screen — was used from 19 September 1974. Only the State Opening is now held in the Throne Hall. Something grander, however, had long been mooted.

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Amid the usual controversy, a riverside site was assembled in the Bang Sue district for a new Parliament mostly utilising land belonging to the Royal Thai Navy. A competition was conducted in 2009 to choose a design for a new complex. Whereas architectural design competitions are common in other countries, this was a novel event for Thailand. Further, such competitions are commonly “international”, open to foreign design firms and accordingly intended to open the local architectural discourse to a wider range of ideas and critique, especially where the project is one of significance to the identity of the society itself and to its global perception. Not so in Thailand: the final competition was limited to chosen local firms. The competition came down to five finalists. The firms and their designs can be briefly summarised, albeit as keywords more than description: •

• •

•

•

Arsomslip: Formalist (concern with buildings’ shapes rather than with their contents), a series of pavilions building up from the river edge to a Buddhist-inspired spire. Design 103: Also formalist, a rotunda as centrepiece but not noticeably Thai (unless in its neo-Classical detail). Architects 49: Twin towers with the parliament between them. A sala (traditional form of shelter) was the only recognisably Thai element. SJA3D (Sumet Jumsai): Monumentalism, with a central modernist spire, a soaring element whose concave forms might be seen as abstractly “Thai heritage”. 110 Architects: Formalist but “abstract”, no symmetry, a “postmodernist” play on grids and diagonals.

In the event, the design of Arsomslip, attributed to architect Teeraphol Niyom, was judged the winner. The jury’s comment: the winning design “… is rooted from the Buddhist Tri-Bhumi. It is a balanced mixed [sic] between traditional Thai architecture and contemporary architecture”.9 Seen as a landscape of tiered pavilions and gardens rising up from the river bank to its prang-like peak, the design if implemented might yet be a distinguished addition to the line of the river (Grand Palace, wat, the monuments of Thonburi). Its effect in that wider context would be to complement — even to rival — the spires and gold chedi of the Grand Palace downstream from it. The instruments of democratic government might finally find representation to stand against those of King and Religion rather than being screened behind them. As an

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a

b

Figure 5.2 Representations of Parliament: (a) modernist, internationalist, behind the royal screen of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (1970–1974); (b) traditionalist claim, in the winning competition entry (2009, Arsomslip).

expression of national identity, however, the complex replicates the continuing uncertainty of the Siamese embrace of modernity: the ThaiBuddhist crown on a progression of formalist pavilions resembles nothing more strongly than the similar crown placed incongruously on Rama V’s Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall from 1882 (Chapter 1). The winning scheme may yet provoke some critical reflection on the nature of a Thai polity (where is democracy to sit in the sanctioned grip of Nation, King and Religion?). However, it is only likely to enter

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into that other, wider discourse of a Thai modernity through a reflective criticism of what, in fact, it represents. There is little present evidence of any such culture of self-reflection in Thai society.

2. Reading the City of the Mind A Reflective Exception: The Sala of Montien Boonma There is one significant exception to the absence of critical reflection. Montien Boonma (1953–2000) was Thailand’s most internationally acknowledged artist.10 He worked in diverse media to explore the relations between energy and space, experimenting with natural materials such as herbs (as well as with their aromas), soil, candles, ash, terracotta and wood, to find new ways of expressing a Thai experience of ephemerality and Buddhist immateriality. Towards the end of his life, he was especially involved with installation and performance art and the idea of the sala and its transformations in Thai-Khmer spiritual architecture. At its simplest, the sala is a traditional, open pavilion comprising four posts and a roof, to serve as a shelter from the sun and the rain. In the ancient Khmer kingdom, agnisala (pavilions with fire or rest houses) lined the royal roads, to shelter travellers while simultaneously binding them back to the sacrality of kingship. The agnisala would also serve as dharmasala (dharma meaning Buddhist teaching and sala meaning pavilion), as their sheltering role shaded into a religious function. Then, there were also hospitals or arokyasala along the royal road where shelter would fuse with both physical, mental and emotional healing. Rulers of the Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, Thonburi and early Rattanakosin kingdoms, in modelling their worlds in accord with the Buddhist Traibhum’s cosmic order, brought the sala into the fusing rituals of royalty and religion (Wiyada, 1998). The designs and decoration of sala and palaces reflected the cosmology of a vertical hierarchy, linking god-kings with heavenly powers. The traditionally democratic idea of sala would be progressively appropriated to elitist exclusivity, then to commercial marketing; the elites and the middle class will acquire antique sala, to be disassembled and re-erected in their private gardens as display of “culture” and “tradition”; royal sala will be guarded against popular use; sala will be installed in airports, hotels and shopping malls to signify “Thainess”. Sala were used for state-nationalist propaganda. A sala in Hagenbeck Park, Hamburg, designed by Pinyo Suwankiri, was dedicated in

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1999 to celebrate the 72nd birthday (sixth cycle) of King Bhumibol (Rama IX); another was similarly built in Tel Aviv in 1998 in anticipation of this glorious occasion and to mark the opening of diplomatic ties between Thailand and Israel. Another was bestowed on Lausanne to commemorate the 17 years that the King had spent there. Most auspicious was the sala gifted to the East West Centre in Hawai’i by King Rama IX. True to the spirit of sala, this duly decayed in the severe climate of Hawai’i, to be replaced in 2007 with a new sala again designed by Pinyo Suwankiri and dedicated by Princess Sirindhorn, Rama IX’s daughter. Virginia Henderson has argued that it is this royal appropriation and, in turn, commercialisation and degradation of meaning that Montien’s art would deconstruct (Henderson, 2008). Montien would return to the idea of ephemerality, immateriality, impermanence, shelter and healing that informs the tradition of sala and, thereby, of Thai culture. Henderson refers to a number of Montien’s sala — Sala of Mind (1995), Arochayasala: Temple for the Mind (1995), Temple of the Mind: Sala for the Mind (1995), and Arokhayasan, Sala of the Mind (1996). Large architectural bodies, two-, three- or four-metres high, are constructed of wooden or steel boxes, rubbed with herbs, ash and soil, somewhat precariously stacked on top of each other, building upwards in rhythmic forms; large brass bells and “lungs” (containers “breathing” aromatic herbs) might dangle in the middle of the sala to act as ballast or counterweights, pulling the carefully balanced towers together (Buchanan, 2004; Henderson, 2008: 180). The actual process of construction of the sala in the gallery for their display is seen as part of the art itself and a profoundly meditative act.11 Montien’s contemporary art installations and sculptures of sala are intended to be spiritual healing spaces which awaken the senses and calm the mind. In themselves, they are stories of struggle and contradiction — enveloping, private spaces yet open and public — tranquil and porous while oppressive and dense — finely balanced, held together by their own tension of opposing forces. Fragrant Thai herbs used for traditional medicine and other local authentic, natural materials are combined with industrial materials of steel, concrete and brick, creating challenging contrasts and dialogue (Henderson, 2008: 179).

The materiality of present architecture is thrown into question. Montien’s sala would seek to bring the mind back to the spiritual realm of space, away from the realm of things; they would stand against the

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Figure 5.3 The great White Elephant of Thanon Phahonyothin: the Chang Building.

royal, institutional and corporate appropriations of sala and thereby such appropriations of space more widely. Impermanence is to be reemphasised. The failure to reflect is to be countered.

Architectural Absurdities The absence of a culture of architectural reflection is in some contrast with an exuberance that sometimes breaks through the banality. A few examples can illustrate these oddities. On Thanon Phahonyothin, a kilometre north of its intersection with Thanon Lat Phrao, is the majestic White Elephant, the “Elephant Tower” or “Chang Building”. Its designer (disparagingly referred to as an “engineer” by local architects) is claimed to have had a liking for elephants and accordingly designed an immense, 32-storeyed office and residential building in the form of an elephant. Space restrictions limited it to three legs rather than four but it does achieve a trunk, tail, ears and eyes. As it rises out of a landscape of mostly four-storeyed shophouses, it distinguishes its entire district.

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b

Figure 5.4 Ruin by design: MahaNakhom project (architect Ole Scheeren, of OMA).

It has another, wonderful effect on its surroundings: its elephant directly faces — confronts, challenges, threatens, charges towards — the SCB Park Plaza and Tower building immediately opposite. The three condominium towers of Supalai Park are similarly threatened. No worse feng shui could ever be imagined. A second absurdity is of altogether more mainstream architectural lineage. The MahaNakhon (Great Metropolis) is a project of German architect Ole Scheeren of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture practice (OMA, most commonly associated with architect Rem Koolhaas), scheduled for completion in 2012. It will comprise “MahaNakhon Terraces, 10,000 square metres … of luxury retail space with lush gardens and terraces … a Lush Urban Oasis”, from which will protrude a 77-storeyed, 150,000-square metre glass tower of condominiums and hotel, “Bangkok’s Tallest Building”, as the architect’s blurb pronounces.12 What makes the building extraordinary, however, is a spiralling band of inset balconies and terraces rising through the tower’s height — pixilated, the blurb calls it. The effect, though, is of erosion, the outcome of some

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Figure 5.5 Bangkok River Park Condominium (1991, architect Rangsan Torsuwan).

savage attack or internal decay, as if in sympathy with its decaying neighbours and the ruins of previous economic folly. On its own terms, MahaNakhon is an ingenious architectural design and will surely yield a distinguished building. Whether its extraordinary allusion to its city is intended or an accident is left to the observer’s imagination. A third example of architectural absurdity returns the attention to the Chao Phraya river banks. Near the Ratchawongse pier (Chinatown) is the gleaming white, high-rise tower of “Bangkok River Park Condominium”. It begins as classical revival on a carpark, rises to a Flamboyant Gothic rose window (fresh from an unnamed cathedral and serving as an air vent to the carpark), rises further through various stylistic references, to be finally topped with a reduced-scale version of Washington’s Capitol. It reads as an attempted history of architecture lesson through the medium of one building. Its sheer visual interest enlivens its whole stretch of the river. Its exuberance, however, does not evidence reflection. Bangkok River Park Condominium, from 1991, is an achievement of distinguished architect and property developer Rangsan Torsuwan.

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b

Figure 5.6 Rangsan Torsuwan: (a) Amarin Plaza, Thanon Phloenchit (1985); (b) Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel (c.1990) with the Erawan Shrine.

Rangsan’s website modestly claims that he “had developed his own unique style, Postmodernism, by integrating classical orders/elements with new technologies which defenitely [sic] suite [sic] their functions; … this concept leads many project successfully especially in marketing aspect”.13 The River Park building had been preceded by a long series of other projects that displayed neo-Classical decoration. So there was Amarin Plaza from 1985; the Flamboyant Gothic of River Park was earlier exhibited in Suanplu Garden, a “Gothic” townhouse development in the Sathorn area from 1988. The Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel and its shrine, on the Ratchaprasong intersection, dates from around 1990 and brings neo-Classicism and neo-Egyptianism together. Grand Amarin Plaza on Thanon Petchaburi, a glass-clad tower on a neo-Classical base, is from 1993. Philip Cornwel-Smith (2005) has labelled this fine output as “plain skyscrapers and malls sporting preposterous drag”. The 1997 financial crisis and other difficulties seriously constrained Rangsan’s output. His two largest projects, State Tower and Sathorn Unique, both in the Sathorn-Charoen Krung area and discussed in Chapter 4, were long delayed with the latter eventually abandoned.

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a

b

Figure 5.7 Rangsan Torsuwan: (a) State Tower; (b) Sathorn Unique.

His illustrious career subsequently suffered a further sad setback when the Criminal Court on 29 September 2008 handed him a 25-year prison term for masterminding the attempted assassination of the president of the Thai Supreme Court.14

The Idea of a Thai Postmodern The boom in Western-style architecture in Bangkok starting in the late 1960s was in part linked to the American presence due to the Vietnam War. It coincided with the return to Thailand of a number of Westerneducated Thai architects who included Rangsan Torsuwan, Krisada Arungwongse, Sumet Jumsai na Ayutthaya, Aphai Phadermchit and Ong-art Sataraphan. The era yielded notable buildings in grey-white concrete rising out of the shophouses, remnant villages and paddy fields which transformed the capital but also rendered it somewhat undistinguished from cities everywhere. As the bulk of the concrete additions submerged the once dominant wat and the greenery of the city, the effect was also to submerge its identity. The importance of Rangsan Torsuwan relates in part to his success in self-promotion and in securing large and significant commissions as

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both architect and developer. However, it also relates to his success in finding an eminently marketable style or architectural language in the otherwise somewhat style-less architectural dross of the 1980s. This style might be termed neo-Classical and it certainly included abundant use of classical (Greek) orders, a favouring of domes and round arches (Roman, or are they more to be seen as American 19th-century classical revival?), yet there will also be Gothic-referencing rose windows and pointed arches. His Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel is Egyptian-Roman hybrid. Rangsan’s own rhetoric, however, would claim that there are also references to Thai elements and that he was giving the nation a new, Thai, “Postmodernist” architectural identity.

Is Rangsan Thai? The architectural eclecticism of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) was a theme of Chapter 1. Imperial ambition (the colonisation of Lanna, Isaan and the southern sultanates) and the strengthening and centralisation of hierarchy and absolutism would be masked by the screens of modernity. In that conjuring act, architecture would take a pre-eminent role (Peleggi, 2002a, 2007). However, it was always an architectural modernity applied merely as a surface across the absolutist state. It may be stretching the argument to suggest that the modern cult of Rama V would lead either the elites or the simpler worshippers also to revere his eclecticism and strategic use of style and superficiality. It would be more reasonable, however, to assert that the king and his age signify the birth of the Nation as most Thais now understand it, just as the hybridised buildings of the throne halls and other eclectic, “open” monuments of the era symbolise that birth (Peleggi, 2002a; Stengs, 2009). Thus, there arises a troubling question: is not the superficial grab at styles in the output of Rangsan Torsuwan, indiscriminately from whatever source might fascinate for the fleeting moment, ultimately in the tradition of the eclecticism, superficiality and populist architecture of Rama V? There are certainly the same domes, classical orders, Gothic referencing and preoccupation with style in the work of both Rangsan and Rama V’s architects. Is not Rangsan, ultimately, profoundly Thai in the most positive sense? Certainly, there is little acknowledgement of anything that can be seen as reflecting on the culture itself (nor is there such reflection in the work of Rama V’s architects).

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Reflections While much of the architectural work of Sumet Jumsai (1939–) is distinguished by fine detailing and use of materials and a sensitivity to international high modernism (the Plaza Athénée Hotel as an example), his more Postmodernist essays are more striking (Taylor and Hoskin, 1996). They are also rare in Thailand as self-conscious, perhaps even self-deprecating architectural jokes. The techno-anthropomorphic Robot Building (1986) on Thanon Sathorn dresses a high-rise office building as a robot. It was designed for the Bank of Asia (subsequently taken over by the United Overseas Bank), allegedly to represent the computerisation of banking. Sumet’s claim is that his design was in conscious opposition to the “postmodern” styles of that era, particularly classical revivalism (Rangsan Torsuwan?) and high-tech architecture as embodied in Paris’ Centre Pompidou (Sumet, 1987). For The Nation newspaper and television group, he built a painterly, plastic-form building (Sumet, 1988a) which, though quite non-referential, was claimed to represent “the editor at his desk”.15 Irrespective of such claims, this is an extraordinary, original and challenging building. It coincided with the over-the-top revivalism of Rangsan and clearly reveals that era as one of vigorous, even exciting architectural contestation which, however, scarcely survived into the 1990s. Sumet, arguably, has emerged as Thailand’s most intellectually thought-provoking architect; marketplace dominance, however, was Rangsan’s. Sumet may well claim his greater distinction in the field of the more plastic arts: his paintings are exhibited and extensively discussed (Taylor and Hoskin, 1996). In 2003, he branched into opera, with the production design for Mae Naak from Thai composer Somtow Sucharitkul to an English libretto based on one of Thailand’s best known ghost stories (Smith, 2006). Sumet has functioned as social, political and cultural commentator, most notably through his articles in The Nation newspaper (Sumet, 1999). He has written extensively on Thai socio-culture and its genealogy and on the peculiarities of Thai political culture. His most influential literary work has been Naga (Sumet, 1988b). From his early life and education variously in France and England and, no doubt, in some response to the European orientation of his distinguished father M.L. Manich Jumsai, Sumet was able to see that the modern construction of Southeast Asia was from a European (French and English) imagining — the point of the present chapter. Naga is therefore an attempt to

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outline an alternative, Southeast Asian imagining of the world. So Asia becomes the centre, the cradle of civilisation, the origin point of architecture and wider culture as we know it. As Montien Boonma would turn architecture and material culture on its head, so would Sumet upturn Western history and historiography. Also, however, Sumet upturns radical Thai historiography. Maurizio Peleggi (2007: 120) observes the rise of a nationalistic literature, notably in the 1920s, that argued the pre-eminence of a Tai race, as one of the most ancient of the world’s races, migrating southwards from their origins in China, founding a great kingdom in the 6th century AD stretching from Yunnan to Bengal, yet only in Siam leaving a pure remnant of that greatness. The myth fitted perfectly with the rabid nationalism of the Rama VI and later Phibun eras; it was especially taken up in the writings of Wichit Wathakan. Sumet’s re-imagining might have lacked empirical grounding; however, its power was in its demolition of the similarly ungrounded, nationalistic assertions of the 1920s and of the subsequent base of Phibun fascism. More powerfully still, it deconstructs Southeast Asian nationalisms.

The Issue of Architectural Education With such differences in the understanding of architectural meaning and indeed of the socio-political role of architecture, it is not surprising that there are significant rifts between Thai and farang (foreigner) architectural discourses. The rifts, not surprisingly, translate into the sphere of architectural education. Thailand now has many university-based architecture schools, mostly founded during or since the 1990s. Their curricula and programmes, however, are invariably set by senior staff and advisors who had themselves graduated from Silpakorn or Chulalongkorn universities and who have brought the conservative, uncritical perspectives of those schools into the new ones. More junior staff (and indeed, many of the seniors) are likely to have had exposure to European, American or Australian schools for postgraduate Masters or PhD degrees and thereby to the vigorous debates and critical traditions of such schools. There is little evidence, however, that they transfer that discursive, critical culture into teaching and debate in the Thai universities. While the West is ambivalently embraced, a Thai construction of knowledge — episteme — remains intact and one is left to question whether the seeming embrace might not be yet another protecting veil — Mongkut’s siwilai

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as a liberal screen across the conservative strengthening of tradition, translated forward a century and a half. A few anecdotes can illustrate aspects of the problem. With the University of Melbourne and the Ecole d’architecture et de paysage de Bordeaux, Kasetsart University’s Architecture Faculty form the BMB (Bangkok, Melbourne, Bordeaux) consortium. In August 2005, I participated in an architectural design studio at Kasetsart involving a mixed French and Thai class who had been set the task of designing a market and cultural centre complex for a site on Khlong San Saeb. The outcome was instructive: only the French students were able to question what a “traditional” market in the 21st century might become, what might be the “culture” that a cultural centre would facilitate in the present time, what architectural elements might be drawn upon from tradition in order to find new architectural forms appropriate to these functions and this location, what are now the relationships between land and water in this once-aquatic landscape. The Thai students, by contrast, preferred to assemble elements that could be from anywhere and for any purpose. I am of course aware that the paragraph above indicates a double neo-colonialism. First, there is the French students’ appropriation of the Bangkok setting and cultural context in order to produce their own images for edifying display back to the Thai students. Second, my own judgement, that only the French images are “Thai” while the Thai images are global dross, is also neo-colonising: only the Western observer will decide what is or is not appropriate for the Thais. That arrogance, however, is the point of the present chapter. The most notable event in this story is that, at the end of the “critique” session, the Thai students and their tutors dutifully acquiesced in the judgement. Or did they? It is almost certain that an element in the acquiescence was Thai reserve and politeness in the presence of foreigners — the episteme of surfaces again. Were the lessons from the farang simply forgotten or, more deliberately, dismissed? One may turn again to the seminal survey of Thai values by Suntaree Komin, referred to above, where the sixth cluster (in order of revealed psychological importance) was “education and competence orientation”; it grouped a “form over content value”, a “form and material possession value”, and “form and perception of development” (Suntaree, 1990: 186–91). Knowledge-forknowledge sake did not receive a high value; rather, the appearance of being educated was what mattered, linked to the highest of all values placed on “face” and the ego. The finding on a “form and perception

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of development value” in the context of an education orientation was especially enlightening: the Thai, in Suntaree’s survey, were found to value material symbols, as these were seen as “forms of being modern” (thansomai ) and “developed”.16 Although Suntaree’s empirical work was from the 1980s, it is tempting to see it as revealing the value underpinnings of Rama V’s cultural collecting (and see Peleggi, 2002a); more directly, the 1980s were the era of Rangsan’s architecture of contentless signs. A second anecdote relates to the National Science Museum, a large, eccentrically-shaped building from 1977, designed by Sumet Jumsai and located on an isolated, poorly accessible site to the north of the city where its main purpose seems to have been to add to the market value of land owned by the Ministry of Science. A “science park” labelled Technotani (the next Silicon Valley) is planned to adjoin it. A PhD project from Silpakorn University was intended to be based on a comparison of this building with equivalent institutions in Paris and Tokyo. The candidate found himself facing two insurmountable difficulties. First, he could not bring himself to question the real motives and the process underlying the somewhat inexplicable location. Second, while the monarch and the royal family were invoked (as usual) to legitimise the museum project, mostly by attributing great scientific achievements to them, the thought of critiquing this aspect of the museum’s programme was altogether too confronting. It rapidly became clear that, to this highly intelligent man, a “Western” critical approach was impossible and, to his Australian academic supervisor, that there are disabling epistemic differences. Again, the author’s intellectual arrogance is acknowledged. Again, also, the point must be made that this and a plethora of similar events illustrate this fifth (epistemic) level of neo-colonialism. There will always be instances of exception: in 2006, I presented a conference paper in Bangkok to a mostly Thai audience, where I drew attention in passing to a particularly gargantuan, intrusive building overlooking a royal palace. I observed that this was surely close to a built insult to the royal institution. The comments were received in stony silence by the audience; nor were there questions on the matter during the subsequent formal discussion session. Afterwards, however, as if wanting to help me understand the Thai way of business, several audience members approached me in private to explain that the reason why the royal family had not intervened in the issue was that they were the developer. (Had they been more precise, they would have said that the Crown Property

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Bureau was the landowner and members of the family were linked to the developer.) There can indeed be criticism, even of Nation-KingReligion, but only in private. There shall be no discourse. It is noteworthy that a survey of “leading Thai intellectuals” by Suchart Sriyaranya (2000) could report that the most highly regarded public intellectuals of the present age have attained their esteem through engagement in the debates on the “need to improve Thai politics to be opened for the participation of people and every social movement” (2000: 17). There were none who were esteemed for critiquing the fundamental structure of the society. The expressed concerns seemed to be for “political reform” — the surface — rather than for deep reflection.

A Concluding Note Although Thai universities might go through the ritual performance of inviting collaboration with Western institutions (where, in the present globalisation of the academic enterprise, they may have no other option), nevertheless at a deeper, epistemological level, this new circle of colonisation is resisted. While in some ways the resistance will appear as involuntary — a “mind block” — when students are pressed to bring critical insight to a situation or idea, they can clearly see the pressure as confronting. There will be no response. This book is about the present city and that is where my concern lies. The brilliance of Bangkok, what makes it truly one of the world’s great cities, is certainly not its mostly mediocre, often decrepit and too often inhuman building stock nor the savagery of its alternately homicidal and gridlocked traffic. Rather, it lies in what has been labelled, above, the “Thai episteme of surfaces” — in the ever-present, dialectical tension between the disciplining veils (of Nation, King, Religion) and the underlying chaos of private actions. While it is important not to see this dichotomy as “contradiction” in a Western structuralist sense, it is equally important to reflect critically upon it. There is clearly a place for architecture and the design of the public realm in such a reflection, just as architecture and the design of the city have been so heavily implicated in the construction of a world of screens.

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Epilogue The City Unmasked

A Subversive Landscape The main entrance gates to Thammasat University are on Thanon Na Phra That and immediately face Sanam Luang. As one enters, there is the bulk of the university’s Auditorium building on the left, in an undistinguished style that makes passing references to both religious and official-nationalist architecture, and a linear garden, some 80 metres long, on the right or northern side of the entrance road. The glory of the garden is its Flame trees (Delonix regia) — King Bhumipol (Rama IX) had planted five of them there on 9 February 1963, bestowing them as a symbol of the university. No mean musician, he went on to write an anthem for the university. The garden has more recently become the setting for the Memorial Sculpture Garden Project. There are eight sculptures. Where the trees set the landscape context, the fifth of the sculptures hints at the political programme: it is double-titled, with “The Age of Breeze, Sunshine and Quiet” on one side, heading a description of a golden time of military

Plan of Memorial Sculpture Garden. 199

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dictatorship, student privilege and seeming opportunity — indeed, the time when the King had planted the trees. The obverse of the freestanding memorial, however, carries the second title: “A Search for True Meaning”. The sequencing of the eight monuments clearly indicates that they are to be read as one leaves rather than enters the campus. They are for the students, not the casual, arriving visitor. The sequence implies a history that can stand as a counterpoint to both that of official nationalism and the history of intrusion that has structured the preceding chapters. Here, the story is not that of intrusion (levels of colonisation) but of indigenous awakening. Titles, captions and sculptured images invoke a narrative of bloody self-discovery.

1. The 1932 Revolution

The revolution of the People’s Party established the six main principles: sovereignty, safety, prosperity, equality, freedom and public education.

This first monument is a sala in the form of a modernist interpretation of the central spire of Thammasat’s earliest building, the symbolic focus of the university.1 University and Constitution are linked through the person of Pridi, founder of both. The memorials that follow are attributed to sculptor Surapol Panyawachira.

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2. The Founding of Thammasat University: The University of Moral Science and Politics

The crucial turning point in Thai education for common people to develop a new generation of politicians for the newly founded parliamentary system, in which the throne was placed under the constitution.

Whereas the memorials that follow are in a sombre darkened bronze, this is glorious and golden. Students are depicted under the benign protection of the symbolic central tower and the university’s crest.

3. Thammasat and the Seri Thai Movement

Thammasat University has served the Seri Thai Movement as the resistance headquarters against the Japanese Axis forces during the Second World War, hence protected Thailand from being the defeated along with the Axis forces.

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4. The Student Movement BE 2494 – BE 2500 A cumulative depiction of three incidents: Driven by the concept “United We Stand”, 2,000 Thammasat students gathered to demand the return of their university a year after the military had taken over campus grounds on 11 October, B.E. 2494. Thammasat students campaigned against war in the Cold War Era. Protesting the deployment of Thai troops to Korea, which resulted in the arrest of 18 students. In B.E. 2500, Thammasat students assumed strong roles in revealing corrupt election practices, making “demonstrations” part of the country’s political tradition.

5. Sunny Breezes /A Search for True Meaning a

b

… Although Thailand was under a military dictatorship from 1963 to 1968, students in those days regarded their privileged status in society with pride and delight, passing much of their time enjoying dances and sporting events within the haven of their university campus. Some scholars have therefore referred to this period of the university’s history as the “Era of Sunny Breezes”.

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Nearby is a plaque to commemorate the King’s planting of the Flame trees. Then, on the obverse of the fifth memorial, is the sequel: … From 1968 to 1973, university students showed signs of becoming more politically aware. They became a force for change, organizing activities which reached out to society both in cities and in rural areas. That time is well remembered. The students themselves said of those years, “It was our era. We wanted not just to get a diploma, but to find real meaning in studying in the university.”

6. 14 October 14 1973

Students and citizens uprising against the dictatorial regime turned a new page of Thailand’s political history at “Lan Poh”, Thammasat University. Consequently, the constitution was restored and democracy bloomed to its fullest, along with the development of social culture.

7. 6 October 1976

The massacre of the non-violent protesters in Thammasat University during which the conservatives set up a situation to sabotage the progressive political movements. This resulted in more than 3,000 college students taking refuge in the jungles throughout the country, joining the Communist Party of Thailand.

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Bodies of staff and students lie, shattered, in the ruins of Nation and democracy. A further text runs around its base in Thai and English: “What is most regrettable is the fact that young people today now have no third choice. If they cannot conform to the government, they must run away. Those interested in peaceful means to bring about freedom and democracy must restart from square one. Dr Puey Ungphakorn from the violence of the coup of 6th October 1976”.

8. Thammasat and Black May, 1992

On 23 February 1991, the army commander under the name of the National Peace Keeping Council (NPKC) overthrew the government and the constitution. In the midst of politic tensions in November 1991, “Lan-Pho — Thammasat University” was revived as a base of democracy demanding. This spiritual place had once served the same intention in 6 October 1976 bloodshed. In April 1992, the base of demonstration had moved to the Government House, Sanamluang and Rachadamnoen Avenue. The military crackdown on 17 May 1992 resulted in massive deaths, disappearances and injuries.

Where the Thammasat tower and spire is the common architectural symbol on the other memorials, here it is the Democracy Monument with its ambiguous references, not to democracy but to fascism.

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The Memorial Sculpture Garden is very un-Thai. While it could not be charged with being anti-Nation, the nation that is implied here is one freed from the military that might depict itself as the Nation’s glory. Nor does it insult the King, although his only presence is linked to 1963 and that happy illusion of military dictatorship. There are no references to Religion. There is a Brahman-Buddhist shrine nearby, alongside the Auditorium building, but it is unconnected to the Memorial Sculpture Garden. This is a history without the veils of NationKing-Religion. The garden is un-Thai in another sense. Although it is a collection of objects (as is the Royal Grand Palace complex or Bangkok space more generally), here there is a deliberation and a conveyed, coordinating narrative that one mostly does not find elsewhere. It is a narrative, moreover, that borders on the seditious.

The Social Construction of Silence It is instructive to turn to Scot Barmé’s account of everyday Bangkok in the late absolutist age of Ramas VI and VII, mostly depicted through the reporting and political cartoons of the popular media. It was an era when Rama V’s carefully constructed image of a modernising Siam had fractured badly; the screens were not holding. The monuments, pre-eminently the Ananda Samakhom Throne Hall, were seen to have beggared the economy and were now presided over by a discredited, even reviled monarchy. The gulf between elite and common people was portrayed with outraged savagery that no modern Thai journalist or editor would dare evoke (Barmé, 2006). Yet, for all that, the 1932 revolution and coup, subject of the first of the Thammasat memorials, was bloodless. The Phibun (Plaek Phibun Songkhram) dictatorship (1938–1944, 1948–1957) had presided over the embrace of fascism, the renaming of the country from the geographic Siam to the ethnic-exclusionist Thailand, the sidelining of the monarchy and the political enshrining of the military as The Nation. It was to a discredited monarchy, fractured society and feeble economy that King Bhumibol (Rama IX) had succeeded in 1946. So how was that forever underlying preoccupation with surfaces — appearances — mustered to achieve the present culture of a glorious Nation, a transcendent King, and an eternal Religion? The answer is found in the struggle between military, royalists and liberals for control of the emerging nation-state, beginning in the 1940s. On 9 November 1947, the military seized power by coup, to “uphold the

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honour of the army” and to install a government “which will respect the principles of Nation, Religion and King”, explicitly reviving the Rama VI royal-nationalist formula (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 142).2 The royalist Democrat Party dominated the cabinet but real power was with the military. Formulaic monarchy would be observed but the King would be constrained, a mere decoration, even restricted from touring outside the capital. The military government meanwhile became the public patron of Buddhism, replacing the monarchy of the first four reigns: old wat were restored and new ones built. The reconstruction of the legitimating triad, towards that of the present, began around 1958. General Phibun was little more than figurehead Prime Minister in much of the 1948–1957 period, as there was a constantly destabilising conflict between the army and the police, to be partly resolved in Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat’s first coup on 18 September 1957. Sarit executed a second coup on 20 October 1958, thereby launching his own dictatorship (1958–1963). The corruption, centralisation of power and Bangkok dominance of the long Phibun era had alienated the periphery, especially the Isaan plateau and its Lao population; insurrections were endemic, the Communist Party of Thailand was linking up with those of Laos and Cambodia and the idea of a unified Thailand seemed elusive. Both the military government and its American sponsors saw the potential of the King as a strategic instrument in strengthening the regime (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 175–7; Peleggi, 2007: 97). The rigidly controlled media were mobilised to proclaim the King’s endorsement of Sarit’s coups, to portray King and Nation as one, Nation and army as mutually constitutive of each other, and a splendidly uniformed King as symbol of both Nation and military. Upon Sarit’s death in 1963, General Thanom Kittikhachon assumed the dictatorship which he enjoyed until that moment in October 1973 when political contestation shifted from the struggles of the military club to the streets of Bangkok. It is this new era of mass protest and massacre — and incidentally of a more ambiguously located monarchy — that the last three of the Thammasat sculptures would memorialise. The media now needed to work differently — still to glorify King and military as emblem of the Nation but also to depict a unity of King and a mass urban culture and, conversely, of King and disadvantaged peasantry. It is not accidental that the new source of power is control of precisely those new media marshalled in this new balancing act (Thaksin, Sondhi).

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Layered Space The weaving of objects into a coherent narrative in the Memorial Sculpture Garden stands in sharpest contrast with: (1) the seemingly random, illusion-building, anti-transparent agglomeration of objects in the selectively modernising project of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V); (2) the realm of screens and surfaces of Nation-King-Religion, akin to the illusionary intent of Rama V’s project, that have been evoked in the post-1958 city to veil the violence of its production and control; and (3) the random, disordered, almost accidental accretion of elements that constitute the muddle of modern Bangkok space, also in part veiled by the screens of Nation-King-Religion. We have witnessed “civilisation” as the collection of objects and images (Rama V), as Western modernity was reduced to a shop of baubles to be acquired and elegantly displayed. Surfaces would change so that what lay behind them could remain the same. The depthless accretion of emblems would pepper the spaces of the city: in its brilliant acquisitions, the Bangkok of Rama V outshone all other Southeast Asian cities of its era. Just as the Thammasat Memorial Sculpture Garden throws The Nation into question, so do Rangsan’s monuments in revivalist drag bring Rama V’s shop of images, no doubt unwittingly, into questioning uncertainty. Sumet Jumsai in the 1980s, in turn, stripped away the West-worship of Rangsan and thereby, albeit very obliquely, that of Rama V. Montien Boonma’s sala would throw critical light on the role of architecture in the creation of all illusions — of Nation, King and Religion as of all else. Montien would also reverse the intrusions that have been the ordering theme of this book, to expose something primordially Thai that lies beneath all the surfaces of the city and the society. Returning to the theme of the Prologue, one must also acknowledge that Thaksin Sinawatra’s awakening of an oppressed-class consciousness, most notably in his rural and regional power base, and the counteracting rise of a new middle-class awareness, has also thrown the previous, carefully constructed edifice of Nation, King and Religion into destabilising doubt. The surfaces crack and the edifice is in crisis.

Deconstructing Space The outcome of the accretion and display and of the legitimating surfaces has been a realm of discordant, unassimilated objects and practices

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that constitute the present city. One must read the visual chaos of Bangkok by questioning what lies beneath the display and the surfaces and, in that enterprise, the discords must be confronted — the Thammasat sculptures against The Nation, the Rama V monuments against the idea of democracy, Rangsan against Rama V, Sumet against both unthinking revivalism and slavish technological modernism, Montien against materialist progress, the yellow-shirts and the red-shirts against the myth of order. The city is to be seen as deconstructing the assumptions underlying its own making. With the Internet, the mobile phone and cyber networking, the barriers erected by the institutions of the state will never ultimately hold. Books might be banned, Paul Handley’s The King Never Smiles being a case in point (Handley, 2006); the farang outrage at the suppression, however, comes irresistibly through ever-insinuating cyberspace (Farrelly, 2009). Two phenomena illustrate the power of cyberspace to transform both city and society. The first, indeed, is the force of the Internet in smothering the laws of lèse majesté — the sheer tide of both identified and anonymous criticism, also the inability to block it, exposes the institutions of Nation, King and Religion to the corroding force of local doubt. The second is even more dramatic: although in self-imposed exile, the deposed Thaksin could use the mobile phone to project both his message and his image into the space of the city at scales varying from the vast public rally to the person of the individual supporter. The communicative power of the built environment is that it is always ambiguous, even when stridently propagandist (Democracy Monument, Victory Monument, the endless displays of royal portraits). The Thammasat Sculpture Garden may be propagandist as is the “official” memorial to 14 October 1973 (Chapter 2); yet even here, there will be rival interpretations. The viewer (interpreter) retains power. The communicative power of the new electronic media (the Internet, the weblog, Facebook) is that the individual exercises power. The intersections of built environment and electronic media become the new stage for the production of power (Tehran, Bangkok, less so Kuala Lumpur with its fewer such intersections).3 In the case of Tehran, the Internet and the blog progressively eroded the restrictions of the Islamic state and then, in 2009, the mobile phone camera could expose the repressions and atrocities of the streets. In Bangkok, Thaksin’s mobile phone became an instrument both for control and for the

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transgression/destruction of power. The veils and screens, it seems, cease to hold and reflection becomes inescapable, even if still surreptitious. The fall of the protecting veils might be looked upon as the ultimate colonisation. Other worldviews become inescapable. Whenever one worldview invades another, both can be seen to gain and we can witness that metamorphosis from which a new world can emerge.

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Glossary

Glossary

Angyi ASEAN baan, ban Baan Man Kong baan suan rim khlong BBC BMA Bodhisatta bot (ubosot) Brahma Buddha CBD chanod Chao Phraya

chedi chofa chumchon CODI Dhamma Erawan farang feng shui garuda HDF

Chinese secret society Association of Southeast Asian Nations house, village government slum renewal programme house in orchard along canal British Broadcasting Corporation Bangkok Metropolitan Administration a future Buddha congregation/ordination hall of a wat the Creator in the Hindu trinity of principal gods the Enlightened One central business district title deed the highest conferred rank of Thai nobility; very rarely there has also been Somdet Chao Phraya, equivalent to royalty monument or shrine, originally erected over a relic of the Buddha bird’s head finial at the end of a ridge on a bot or wihan traditional community Community Organization Development Institute the teaching of the Buddha a three-, sometimes 33-headed elephant, vehicle of the god Indra foreigner, usually referring to a Westerner Chinese system of geomancy, for siting temples, houses, etc. a giant, fierce bird usually with a human torso; a royal emblem Human Development Foundation 210

Glossary

Hokkien Indra Isaan khlong khwan charoen, khwan siwilai kreng chai larn wat lèse majesté

lieux de mémoire (Fr.) Loy Krathong masjid milieux de mémoire (Fr.) mihrab, mirop

mimbar mu’ang muban-chad-san Naga NHA OMA pa thu’an PAD prang rai saan chao ti saan phra phum saksit

211

Chinese dialect group, originally from Fujian the storm god northeastern, referring to the Lao-speaking people of Thailand’s NE provinces canal civilised the quality of being caring and considerate temple yard or grounds crime or offence against the sovereign power of the state (in Thailand, against the King, Queen or Crown Prince) sites of memory Festival of Light (literally, “float a boat”), usually falls in November an Islamic mosque environments of memory a niche or depression in the wall of a mosque to indicate the direction of Mecca a pulpit in a mosque where the Imam stands to deliver sermons the civilised city-state housing estate the divine serpent king, guardian of treasures, god of the underworld National Housing Authority Office of Metropolitan Architecture the uncivilised, forested land beyond the city-state People’s Alliance for Democracy (the “yellow-shirts”) a high monument or sanctuary, usually on a square base Thai measure of area (= 1,600 square metres) spirit house for the spirits of ancestors spirit house for the spirit of the place supernatural power

212

Glossary

sala Sangha SAP Shiva siwilai soi Songkran Taechiu tambon thanon ti-chad-san Traibhum trok tuk-tuk UCDO UDD Vishnu wang wat wihan

an open pavilion, used as a resting or meeting place the Buddhist monkhood structural adjustment package the destroyer in the Hindu trinity of principal gods civilised laneway, secondary road the traditional Thai New Year’s day, now 13 to 15 April Chinese dialect group, originally from southern Fujian district road land allotments the doctrine of the Three Worlds (Heaven, Earth, Hell), the Thai Buddhist cosmogony walkway or very narrow laneway; below a soi in the hierarchy of pathways motorised rickshaw Urban Community Development Office United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (the “red-shirts”) the preserver in the Hindu trinity of principal gods a palace a Buddhist temple an assembly hall in a wat for monks and laity, housing one or more Buddha images; originally the dwelling place of monks

Notes

Prologue 1. 2.

Popular Thai saying. The identity of the killers here, as elsewhere in this and earlier uprisings, is always contested and never resolved. Was the fire from military or rebel guns? 3. Craig Reynolds additionally notes that Siam (sayam) is itself “modern”, probably coined by Mongkut (Rama IV) for considerations no less political than the invention of 1939. The early treaties referred only to krungthep or muang thai (Reynolds, 2006: 274–5n2). 4. Bangkok Post, 27 August 2008, pp. 1, 3–4. 5. The Age (Melbourne), 3 December 2008. Much of the following is based on personal observation as the author witnessed the events in Bangkok. A useful source of commentary are various papers in Funston (2009). 6. The general comment from the media was that the army Commanderin-Chief, General Anupong Paojinda, simply “rejected [Prime Minister] Samak’s orders in a most discreet manner”. Nattaya Chetchotiros, “Seeking a new political order post-Samak”, Bangkok Post, 4 September 2008, p. 11. 7. The Age (Melbourne), 6 December 2008, p. 16. 8. Blogger Laoism, 29 December 2008, at [accessed 6 January 2009]. The removal of Queen Sirikit images occurred, not surprisingly, in Chiang Mai, other parts of the north and in the northeast, strongholds of Thaksin support. 9. In an open vote, Abhisit defeated Police General Pracha Phromnok from Pheu Thai party, successor to the successive Thaksin parties. 10. [accessed 6 January 2009]. The date of this banner is in some dispute, with other sources referring to 31 December; see [accessed 13 August 2009]. UDD core member Jatuporn Prompan subsequently asserted that there was no intention to insult the monarchy and that the “privileged thieves” referred to Abhisit. The words on the banner were “Abhisit-chon-jora”, referring to a privileged group or privileged “thieves”. 11. While the newspapers remain the best source of information on the rift, there are also summaries and discussion in Nostitz (2009) and Funston (2009). 213

214

Notes to pp. xxii–15

12. Most notorious (in Thailand) was a series of articles in The Economist in December 2008 and January 2009. The 4 December issue specifically quoted from The King Never Smiles (Handley, 2006), an unauthorised biography of King Bhumibol that is banned in Thailand. Other European media joined the discussion, for example, International Herald Tribune, 31 January 2009.

Chapter 1 1. 2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Both the airport expressway and the very-fast train traverse a landscape of Islamic mosques but no wat (Buddhist temples). Melford has noted that, in addition to mirroring Ayutthaya architecturally, Rama I had taken a range of other actions to replicate the traditions and ceremonies of the former capital. He ordered newly discovered white elephants to be brought to Rattanakosin as a visible sign of the kingdom’s prospering; ancient royal ceremonies were restored and their religious nature emphasised (Melford, 1970: 171–87). On the monarchy generally, see Chaiyan (1994) and Mead (2004). Buddhist mythology holds that when a great Chakkavatti king or Universal Monarch appears in the world, this gem which normally resides on Mount Vibula will come to him together with six other gems and will remain with him until the end of his reign (Coedès, 1915: 9). On its fabled Ceylon, Pagan and Angkor derivation, see Lingat (1934) and Briggs (1951: 151). On this rivalry between dynasties expressed as a rivalry between images (Emerald Buddha versus Phra Bang, Vientiane versus Luang Prabang), see Reynolds (1969). It is important to note that Rama III himself had a legitimacy problem: his succession to the throne was controversial as he was the son of a concubine; the more legitimate heir was his half-brother Mongkut. On the third reign, see Vella (1957). Some accounts give late 1828 as the date for this event. The war and its aftermath in Anuvong’s humiliation is central to both Siamese and Lao imaginings of “nation” and, accordingly, Thai and Lao historiographies give radically different treatments. Suwaphat Sregongsang has drawn my attention to this quite extensive literature where, from the Thai side (demonising Anuvong), one can refer to Thongsohphit (1971) and Pongpipat (1972); from the Lao (elevating Anuvong to national hero), there is Sawang Veeravong (1969), Duangsai Luangpasee (2001), and Sunate Bhotisan (2002). English translations of titles are used. There is a Phra Racha Wang Derm Restoration Foundation concerned with restoring the Phra Racha Wang Derm palace in the Royal Navy headquarters compound. It is a useful source on both King Taksin and King

Notes to pp. 17–39

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

215

Pinklao, the vice-king to Mongut (Rama IV), who also lived in the palace. Pinklao was principal founder of the navy and hence his Wang Derm palace became its headquarters. When he moved to the Front Palace, the area of its compound now occupied by Thammasat University became the naval base. See [accessed 15 June 2009]. The most famous members of the Sultan Sulaiman Iranian-Shia branch were the Bunnag family, the premier noble family of 19th-century Siam. Notably, they were principally influential in King Mongkut (Rama IV) ascending the throne; Somdet Chao Phraya Si Suriyawongse (Chuan Bunnag) (1808–1883) was Prime Minister to Rama IV and regent during Rama V’s minority. This was part of the quite desperate efforts of the royalist clique to showcase the monarchy during Ananda Mahidol’s brief (and fatal) visit of 1946 in an attempt to re-ingratiate a tarnished institution (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 176). “Italian Architects in Bangkok: Monuments to their Artistry”, at [accessed 10 July 2009]. Nora edited seven volumes of essays from nearly 120 French scholars dissecting memories of: (1) the French republic; then (2) the nation; and finally, (3) France itself. His project built on work of Halbwachs (1992). The seven volumes of the Nora work covered 1984–1992; especially referred to here is Nora (1986). An accessible outline is Nora (1989). Loy Krathong, the Festival of Lights, is doubly ambiguous, first as ritualised spirituality and second in its origins. Of Hindu derivation, its origins are popularly claimed to be in the Sukhothai kingdom although scholars now see it as an invention of the early Bangkok era, with some attribution to Rama IV. “Loy” means to float, “Krathong” is a raft, carrying a small candle or light. This atrocity was notably communicated back to Europe via the letters of Bishop Barthélemy Bruguière, then Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of Siam (Bruguière, 1831). I have previously developed the following argument in King (2003: 17–8). This issue is variously dealt with in the chapters of Manas and Turton, eds. (1991). The Traibhum Phra Ruang (Three Worlds according to King Phra Ruang) is attributed to King Lithai, the fifth king of Sukhothai, in 1345. David Wyatt (2002: 55–6) points out, however, that the Rama I version of the cosmology reverses the order of the three worlds: where the version from 500 years previously had begun with heaven and worked down to the world of humans and then the underworld, the new version begins with the human. Humans are placed at the centre and in charge of their own fate. This would be a dynasty of self-willed power, divinely sanctioned.

216

Notes to pp. 39–62

19. It is not coincidental that Martin Heidegger saw the central questions of human existence to be the nature of being and time, that these gave the title to his most influential text and that his ideas have in turn had a significant role in the reform and redefinition of Buddhist thought in the present age. 20. It is instructive to observe that the notion of boundary is alien in Thai culture and language and that this led in the past to great difficulties and misunderstandings in defining the nation-state and other bounded geographical units (Thongchai, 1994). 21. On the old sultanate-kingdom of Patani and its suppression by Rama V’s Siam, see Ibrahim Syukri (2005).

Chapter 2 1.

“Pahurat Little India in Bangkok”, at [accessed 19 June 2009]. On Thailand’s Sikhs, see Sidhu (1993). 2. “Riches to Rags to Revs”, interview with Sak Nana, Bangkok Post, 24 April 2009, at [accessed 20 June 2009]. 3. “Soi Sampheng — The Origins of Chinatown Bangkok”, at [accessed 10 July 2009]. 4. The source for much of this description of Yaowarat is the information boards to inform the passing public, installed by the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority and related government agencies. 5. [accessed 18 June 2009]. 6. See the various links from [accessed 18 June 2009]. 7. On the links of the Chearavanont family and CP with President George Bush and Neil Bush, see “Influence Peddling, Bush style”, The Nation, 23 October 2000, at [accessed 24 September 2010]. 8. Patsinee Kranlert, “An Oasis of Calm and a Unique Viharn”, Bangkok Post, 5 April 2009, Brunch 12. Also Warren (1986: 38) and Aasen (1998: 167). Wat Yannawa is very wealthy, linked to the Charoen Krung business community and associated with the Crown Prince. 9. Sumet Jumsai sees the “self-colonising”, land-based actions of Ramas IV and V as a specific “Siamese”, Chao Phraya river basin practice (Sumet, 1988b). 10. “Bangkok Tramways 1930”, at . For many images of the Bangkok trams in the quiet streets of the 1960s, see [accessed 11 July 2009].

Notes to pp. 63–85

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

217

A source on the traces of the tramway system, still to be read from the streets of Bangkok, is at [accessed 12 October 2009]. On the decades-long battle over closing the trams, sections of the railway and the Mae Klong market, see [accessed 10 July 2009]. Much of the data here is from the National Archives, translated by Wisarut Bholsithi; see [accessed 10 July 2009]. On the ambiguities of Ratchadamnoen and the construction of memories of it, see Chatri Prakitnonthakan, “Memory and Power on Ratchadamnoen Avenue”, at [accessed 10 October 2010]; also Chatri (2009) Jit Phumisak (1930–1966) was a poet, musician, prolific essayist and Marxist “martyr” who wrote on the need for a politically committed literature, art and social critique. He was shot by police in 1966 (Baker and Pasuk, 2005: 189, 283). Interview, “101 East”, Al Jazeera, 9 February 2008, at ; interview, CNN, 14 February 2008, at [accessed 15 June 2009]. It is poignant that the university’s seal features the Bangkok Democracy Monument which, in turn, represents the Thai constitution of 1932. This is superimposed on the Dharmacakra or Wheel of Law, itself representing the university’s name in Pali. Supoj Wancharoen, “Struggling Farmers Grow with the Flow of Life in the Capital”, Bangkok Post, 18 September 2010, p. 2. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews, approximately 30 in each case, during 2001 and 2002. Each interview comprised a number of stages as the households were visited and revisited a number of times over the two-year period. The interviews were supplemented by direct participant observation (Cuttaleeya, 2005). On this point, I am indebted to Sidh Sintusingha. The Khlong Bang Bua community is the subject of ongoing PhD research (in 2010) by Boonanan Natakun in the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. For much of the following, I am indebted to Sompong Amnuay-ngerntra and to his PhD dissertation which I supervised (Sompong, 2007a, 2007b). Interesting here is the role of the Bunnags, the pre-eminent noble family of the 19th century. Dis Bunnag, Somdet Chao Phraya Borom Maha Prayurawongse, was principally instrumental in the ascent of Mongkut (Rama IV) to the throne; his son Somdet Chao Phraya Borom Maha Sri

218

Notes to pp. 89–102

Suriyawongse was Rama IV’s Prime Minister and Regent for Rama V. It could be argued that the Bunnags provided a liberalising influence in the Rama IV reign, but more conservative in that in that of Rama V.

Chapter 3 Also The Nation, 23 December, 2005, p. 1. For much of the following, I am indebted to discussions with M.R. Pumin Varavarn and to his PhD thesis (Pumin, 2007a). 2. Information also from exhibition of Sraprathum Palace at Siam Discovery Centre, 10–17 September 2006, to commemorate Queen Sawang Wattana. 3. On the Crown Property Bureau, see Porphant (2008). Porphant observes that the crown lands have been poorly managed, rents have been traditionally below market levels, with tenants complaining bitterly when rents are raised. 4. Porphant especially refers to Chollada (1986) and Brown (1988). 5. For convenience, I will mostly refer to this road as Sukhumvit. It does carry a number of names, however: within Rattanakosin, it begins at the Royal Grand Palace as Thanon Kalayana Maitri, becoming Thanon Bamrung Muang at the Sao Ching Cha (Giant Swing), then Thanon Rama I as it crosses Khlong Phadung Krung Kasem (the old city’s outer moat) to leave Rattanakosin, then Thanon Phloenchit at Wat Pathumwanaram, and finally Thanon Sukhumvit when it crosses the rail line that runs to the Khlong Toei port. 6. M.R. Pumin Varavarn is quoting from an interview, 23 July 2006, with Udomsri Buranasiri, retired architecture academic from Chulalongkorn University. This and other interviews with long-term Sukhumvit residents are reported in Pumin (2007a). 7. Rai is a Thai unit of area, which equals 1,600 square metres. 8. Interview with Udomsri Buranasiri, 23 July 2006, in Pumin (2007a: 119). See also Udomsri (2004). 9. The extension of Sukhumvit along the eastern seaboard passes through Si Racha in Chonburi province, on the way to Pattaya and Rayong. Si Racha is especially Japanese in its population and, more recently, in its entertainment offerings and is often referred to as “Little Japan”. 10. Bangkok Post, 24 December 2005, p. 2. 11. Gary LaMoshi, “Brazen Destruction Threatens Thai Image”, Asia Times Online, 30 January 2003, at [accessed 25 September 2010]. 12. For a very detailed account of this affair, the Royal Thai Police and political involvement in it and the subsequent investigations (in the safe political hands of Somchai Wongsawat, Prime Minister Thaksin’s brother-in-law), see Scott-Clark and Levy (2004).

1.

Notes to pp. 102–29

219

13. The Davis Hotel is in the upmarket condominium zone at the southern (Thanon Rama IV) end of Sois 22 and 24. It is a sprawling complex that is somewhat unique in Bangkok in that its styling is taken from regional models: its imagery is distinctively derived (debased) from Khmer forms and decoration, its “Corner Wing” somewhat sacrilegiously topped with a prang. 14. Quoted from information plaque on the wall isolating the house from the “public” garden. 15. Elephant begging is linked to the destruction of the economy and culture of the Isaan plateau area and the North. It is controversial and seen as damaging to both elephants and the social structure of Isaan villages (Pattrapon, 2008). 16. While Thais hold the shrine in special reverence, the more purposeful visitors are claimed to be mainly Brahma Buddhists visiting from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan; interview with Srislang Sooksomstarn, secretary, the Erawan Shrine Foundation, 10 August 2006, in Pumin (2007a: 120–1); Nakagawa and Bussarakorn (2003). 17. Interview with Jeh Noy, 28 July 2008, in Pumin (2007a: 119). 18. Specific reference is made to Jackson (1996, 1997, 2000). 19. Wyatt (2002: 57–61) has drawn attention to the way in which the old (Siamese) chronicles have referred to instances of homosexual behaviour: they are “inauspicious” unless they have “political consequences”. 20. Jackson’s argument goes further than this, as he suggests a theory alternative to Foucault’s to account for the emergence of gender diversity in Siam, based on ideas of “performativity” from Judith Butler (1993, 2000) and Annamarie Jagose (1996). This holds that the ritualised repetition of behaviours or discursive acts labelled “feminine” and “masculine”, respectively, produces the perception in both actor and observer of a feminine or masculine gendered subjectivity. The corollary is that other performative rituals of gender will be accompanied by related shifts in the forms of gendered subjectivity (Jackson, 2003a).

Chapter 4 1.

2.

3. 4.

For a description of the conditions in which the plan was prepared, see “Bangkok 2001: A Space Odyssey”, at [accessed 16 July 2009]. John Laird (2000: 7) writes of “the Thai patronage system [where] those who smooth the way for big projects and big transactions routinely expect rewards in return”. The reference is to Simon Fluendy and Joanna Slater, “Pity the Poor Tycoons”, Far Eastern Economic Review, 6 November 1997, p. 80. Bangkok Post, 18 March 2001, p. 4.

220

Notes to pp. 129–55

5.

“Assessing Hopewell Structure”, AIT/CENews online, 8 (4), 2005, at [accessed 26 July 2009]. Redrawn by the author from Bangkok Master Plan (future Bangkok mass transit map) of Chatchawal Phansopa as updated January 2005, at [accessed 6 March 2010]. The monocentric idea of the efficient city derives in part from the 1920s Chicago School of Urban Ecology and in part from the land-rent theory of Alonso (1964). The polycentric urban model is also of long lineage but has been refocused by Garreau (1991) on “edge cities” and through a diversity of writings on the Los Angeles region including Giuliano and Small (1991), and Dear (2000, 2002). Pasuk and Baker (2000: 16) cite remarks by Robert Rubin to Chulalongkorn University, 30 June 1998, referring to “noncommercial relationships amongst the banks, governments, and industrial companies”. “Plan to Revive Building Projects under Review”, International Herald Tribune, 14 August 2006, p. 2. There is an ephemerality to these various establishments. The names of bars and massage clubs can quickly change with their changing ownership; additionally, a few that were “entertainment” establishments in the early 2000s had, by 2009, become “hotels”. Described in “Brahma Shrine Re-Dedication at Caesars Palace Sept 27th”, at [accessed 25 October 2009]. [accessed 16 April 2009]. Wayne Arnold, “Monuments to the Thai Debt; Real Estate Fiascos Rear their Heads on the Bangkok Skyline”, at [accessed 19 March 2009]. On the Rasri debt issue, see “Rasri Bualert Faces Charges over bt8-bn Bank Loan”, The Nation, 8 October 2009. [accessed 20 April 2009].

[accessed 21 April 2009]. [accessed 22 July 2009]. [accessed 25 July 2009]. One of the few systematic studies of health issues in the Khlong Toei slums found another unaddressed area in the prevalence and risk factors

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Notes to pp. 159–75

19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

221

of hypertension. Not surprisingly, the causes were seen as linked to “an unhealthy lifestyle” (Chitr et al., 1989). Bangkok Post, 27 March 2009, p. 6. Personal observation, Khlong Toei market, 27 March 2009. In September 2010, the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) recommended investigation of the Port Authority of Thailand over illegally awarding a contract for Khlong Toei market lease to Legal Professional Company. There has been violence, explosions, demonstrations closing roads, etc., for some years. The Nation, 12 September 2010, p. 2. The Pak Mun dam is approximately 5.5 kilometres west from the confluence of the Mun and Mekong rivers in Ubon Ratchthani province, completed in 1994. It is a 136 MW hydro-electric power project built by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) with support from the World Bank. Its immediate effect was to flood 117 square kilometres of land and displace around 3,000 families. It has been criticised for adverse environmental effects, destruction of fisheries, insufficient compensation to affected communities and failure to deliver projected power output. Quoted is Paul Katz, principal of New York architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects, who has “spent time in Bangkok”, in [accessed 21 April 2009]. I refer specifically here to a comment by Sumet Jumsai relating to the abandoned SV Garden project on Thanon Rama III, August 2007. For the reporting of this aphoristic remark, I am indebted to Sidh Sintusingha.

Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

The appearance of the French presence in Siam was augmented by the habit of the French travellers to write a book or memoir about their travels. On the wider issue of modern Thai literature, see O’Neil (2008). For a more Buddhist-focused perspective on this movement, see Parnwell (2005). “M.L. Manich Jumsai (1908–2009). A Life Devoted to Education”, at [accessed 19 April 2009]. The significance of this re-assembling of documents is that the bulk of early Siamese archives were destroyed in the 1767 sacking of Ayutthaya. Santanee Phasuk and Philip Stott (2004) have especially dealt with a similar dearth in the field of 18th- and 19th-century Siamese cartography, seeing a cultural element in the failure to record and preserve.

222

Notes to pp. 178–208

6.

The media coverage of this event is extensive over several years. A reasonable summary is “FIDF to Sue Potjaman over Land”, Bangkok Post, 18 September 2009, p. 1. The attribution is by Koompong Noobanjong (2003). For images of the 10 March assault on the Victory Monument, see [accessed 11 March 2009]. [accessed 7 Dec 2009]. In the following discussion of Montien’s work, I am indebted to many conversations with Virginia Henderson and especially to her PhD dissertation with Silpakorn University, Bangkok (Henderson, 2008). Also on Montien, see Wongchirachai (1993), Apinan (1996) and Richard (1998). A further source are catalogues for exhibitions of his work, including: Thaiaht, National Gallery, Bangkok, 7 September–3 October 1990; Arte Amazonas, Goethe Institut, Bangkok, 4–27 June 1992; Works, 1990–1993, National Gallery, Bangkok, 25 February–22 March 1993; Content Sense, National Gallery, Bangkok, 14 January–3 February 1995. “MahaNakhon by OMA”, de zeen design magazine, 23 July 2009, at [accessed 27 July 2009]; Cimi (2009). [accessed 18 April 2009]. The attempted assassination of Pramarn Chansue, President of the Supreme Court was in 1993, at the time when Rangsan’s property development difficulties were mounting. Rangsan’s business and personal disputes with Pramarn were believed to have motivated the plot. Rangsan was arrested in May 1993; the trial ran for 15 years. See [accessed 16 April 2009]. In September 2010, Rangsan’s conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal on grounds of “unbelievable content” and “unconvincing motives” (The Nation, 22 September 2010, p. 1). I have frequently been regaled with this explanation of The Nation building by its architect. Also [accessed 27 October 2009].

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

Epilogue 1.

2. 3.

A similarly modernist abstraction of the symbolic spire was used by Sumet Jumsai as centre-point for the Rangsit satellite campus of Thammasat University (Sumet, 1986). Baker and Pasuk cite Thak (1979: 31). On Kuala Lumpur, King (2008b); in the same vein, for Seoul, King (2009).

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240

Index

Index

Aasen, C., 22, 25, 28, 178, 216n8 Abhisit Vejjajiwa, xxiii–xxv, 42, 213n9 absolutism, royal, xxvii, 22, 25, 30, 66, 108, 110, 193 Administrative Court building, 181 Advertising, 121 aesthetic domination (Ratchadamnoen), 59 aestheticisation of poverty, 165 AIDS, 106, 155–6 Aizura, A.Z., 121 Al Jazeera, 217n15 Aliens Act, 49 Alonso, W., 220n7 America, American influence, 79, 94, 99–101, 108, 127, 141–2, 155, 165, 168, 192, 195, 206 economic responses, 140 R&R programme, 92, 94, 99, 126, 147 road planning, 142 Ammar Siamwallah and Orapin Sopchokchai, 138 Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, xxii, 25–6, 28, 61, 66, 183, 185, 205 Andaya, B.W. and L.Y. Andaya, 51 Anderson, B., 85, 166 Angel, S., 157 Angel, S. and Somsook Boonyabancha, 157 animism, 37 Anupong Paojinda, 213n6 Anuvong, King, 9, 38, 179, 214n7 Aphai Phadermchit, 192 Apichat Tho’ngyu, 172

Apinan Poshyananda, 22, 25–6, 28 aranyawasi (forest dwelling monks), 173 architectural discourse, education, 195–8 architectural style, see also language, architecture Art Deco, 66, 178, 181 Baroque, 25 Chinese, 19–20, 26, 71 Gothic, Flamboyant, 190–1 Gothic-revival, 26, 193 International Style, 182–3 Jugendstijl, Art Nouveau, 178 National Socialist, 181 neo-Classical, 20, 25–6, 29, 149, 154, 181, 191, 193 neo-Egyptian, 191–2 neo-Italianate, 55 neo-Venetian Gothic, 26 Renaissance-revival, 25 Romanesque-revival, 55 architecture as legitimation, 4 Archive of Rattanakosin, 89 Army, Royal Thai, 50, 67, 179 “Armoured Brigade” radio station, 67 as real source of power, 29–31 Corps of Engineers, 102 Arnold, W., 220n13 Arsomslip, 184–5 ASEAN, xxiii–xxiv, 182 Asia Books, 142 Asia Institute of Technology, 129 Asia Times Online, 218n11 240

Index

Askew, M., 57, 92, 99 Assembly of the Poor, 164 Assumption Cathedral, 55 Attachak Sattayanarak, 78 Australia(n), 155, 195–7 authors, 168 automobile culture, 127–8 Ayutthaya, 2–4, 6, 14, 18, 21, 48, 55, 167, 186, 214n2, 221n5 Baan Man Kong, 81–2, 160, 176 Baan Norasingh, 28, see also Government House baan suan rim khlong, 39, 41, 72, 91, 114 Baker, C., 84 Baker, C. and Pasuk Phongpaichit, 7, 26, 42, 49–50, 59, 66–7, 85, 100, 179, 206, 215n10, 217n14, 222n2 Bamrung Bunpanya, 172–3 Ban Bangraonok, 72–4, 83, 160 Bang Kachao, 137 Bang Khun Prom Palace, 25 Bang Pa-In Palace, 26 Bang Sue, 62, 131, 184 Bangkhen, 80, 160, 174 Bangkok as Chinese real estate, 51, 62, 69 as heterotopic, 87 Bangkok Bank, xix, xxv, 58, 128 Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), 71, 128, 133, 216n4 Policy and Planning Department, 133 Bangkok planning, 127–33, 135–8, 176 “Bangkok 2001: A Space Odyssey”, 219n1 Bangkok Master Plan, 132, 220n6 Bangkok Metropolitan Plan 2533, 127

241

Comprehensive Plan 1999, 133–4 First Revised Metropolitan Plan, 128 Greater Bangkok Plan 2543, 128 linear versus nodal, 134 monocentric versus polycentric, 133, 220n7 Bangkok Post, 168, 213n4, 216n2, 216n8, 217n17, 218n10, 219n4, 221n19, 222n6 Bangkok River Park Condominium, 190 Bangkok space, see also space as aquatic, 37, 59 as layered, 31–2, 116–7 as muddled, 32, 117, 123, 127 as Muslim, 42 strips versus nodes, 133 Banham, R., 143 Bank of Asia, 66, 194 Barmé, S., 71, 79, 179, 205 Barrett, G., 155 Bartlett, N., 92 Basche, J., 37 Basri Bualert, 149, 220n13 Batson, B.A., 90 beauty fetishisation, 121 pageants, 121 being and time (Heidegger), 216 beggars, begging, 94, 101, 105–7, 122, 163 and gangs, 106 elephant begging, 106, 219n Bello, W. et al., 128, 138, 156, 177 Benjasiri Park, 104 Berlin, 85 BERTS, 129 Bhumibol Adulyadej, King, see Rama IX black-shirts (paramilitary), xix, xxv Blogger Laoism, 213n8 blogs, weblogs, 164, 208

242

Index

BMB (Bangkok-Melbourne-Bordeaux), 196 Bodhisatta, 5, 19 Boonanan Natakun, xviii, 217n20 Bordeaux, Ecole d’architecture et de paysage, 196 bourgeoisie, xx, 51 as bridge, 173 Boworadet rebellion, 181 Bowring, J. (and Treaty), 49, 59, 168 Brahma, 113 Brahmanism (Hindu), 40, 113, 125 Breazeale, K., 11 Briggs, L., 214n4 British and “free trade” demands, 49 colonial policy, 44 extraterritorial rights, 50 humiliation of Rama V, 34 support against Front Palace Crisis, 28 Broman, B.M. and M.R. Kukrit Pramoj, 25 brothels, see massage parlours Brown, I., 218n4 Brown, R.A., 48–9, 101 Bruguière, Bishop B., 11, 215n14 BTS Skytrain, xxv, 54, 98–9, 105, 116, 123, 129–30, 133, 143, 153, 176–7, 180, 182 BTSC, 128, 130 Buchanan, B., 187 Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, 39–40 Buddhism and Brahmanism, 37, 40, 78, 113, 115, 125, 145, 219n16 and syncretism, 114 four domains, 38, 168–9 merit, 107 royal versus popular, 11, 30–1, 36, 40, 66, 84 Theravada, as “face”, 37 Buls, C., 63

Bunnag (Sultan Sulaiman branch) family, 215n9, 217n22 Burdett, J., 100 Burma, Burmese, 2, 16, 44, 108 destruction of Ayutthaya, 4 Bush, G.W., President, 54, 216n7 Bush, N., 54, 216n7 Butler, J., 219n20

Cady, C., 5 Caesars Palace (Las Vegas), see Las Vegas Caesars (Ratchadapisek), 143, 147 Cambodia, 6, 110, 180, 206 Carrefour, 141, 148 Catholic Centre, 55 Central Group, 96, 135 Central Lat Phrao, 54, 135 Central Pattana, 54, 97, 142 Central World Plaza, see malls Chaiyan Rajchagool, 214n3 Chaiyarajadhira (Chaiacha), King, 2 Chakkavatti king (Universal Monarch), 8, 214n4 Chakri, Chao Phraya Maha, see Rama I Chakri dynasty, 8, 15, 22–3 and Sinicisation, 42 Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, 24–6, 28, 30, 185 Champasak, 6 Chang Building (“Elephant Tower”), 188–9 Chang Noi, 173 chanod, 61 Chanut Piyaoui, 92 Chao Phraya river, 2–3, 5, 14, 21, 25, 43, 55, 57, 62, 72, 75, 81, 85, 130, 150, 153, 183, 190 chaos as disorder, 80–3, 123, 169, 171, 198, 208 chaos as resistance, 12, 83

Index

Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, 51–4, 58, 141–2, 216n7 7-Eleven, 53–4, 141–2 CP Foods, 54 Makro, 53 Tesco Lotus, 53, 141 Chase Manhattan Bank, 139 Chatchawal Phansopa, 132, 220n6 Chateaubriand, F.-R. de, 167 Chatri Prakitnonthakan, 26, 181, 217n13 Chatthip Nartsupha, 171–3 Chatuchak Park, 131 Chearavanont family, 53–4, 216n7 and N. and G.W. Bush, 54, 216n7 chedi, 14, 24 Chevalier de Forbin, 3 Chia brothers, 51, see also Chearavanont family Chia Tai, 53 Chiang Mai, xx, 8–9, 11, 34, 172, 174, 213n8 Chiang Rai, 8 Chicago School of Urban Ecology, 220n7 China, and Britain, 44 Chinatown, 22, 46, 49–54, 62, 69–71, 84–5, 90, 92, 190, 216n3 Chinese, 45–6, 49, 61, 84–5, 99, 138, 147, 178 bourgeoisie, 51 Cantonese, 46, 69 Chinese-Thai hybridity, 21, 69 diaspora, immigration, 46 economic dominance, 51 ethnic diversity, 7, 46, 50 Hainanese, 46 Hakka, 46 Hokkien, 7, 46 in Rama I reign, 7 in Thonburi, 7, 14, 19 secret societies, 46, 50–1 Sinicisation of Siam, 42 Taechiu, 7, 42, 46, 51

243

Chinese shrines, 69–70 Canton, 69 Gong Wu, 12 Kian Un Keng, 19 Chinitz, John, 24–5 Chirathivat family, 54, 90 Chit Lom BTS station, 98 Chitr Sitthi-Amorn, 221n18 Chitralada Palace, 19, 179 chofa, 24 Choisy, Abbé de, 3 Chollada Wattanasiri, 218n4 Chonburi, 218n9 Christian communities, 20, 78, see also Portuguese Chua, L., 181 Chuan Leekpai, 42 Chula Chakrabingse, 5 Chulalongkorn, King, see Rama V Chulalongkorn Hospital, xxv, 123 Chulalongkorn University, 25, 70, 94, 174, 195, 218n6, 220n8 chumchon, 75–6, 160 Chuvalit Yongchaiyudh, 139 Chuvit Kamolvisit (Davis Komol), 102–4 Baan Davis, 104 Chuvit Garden, 103–5, 116, 147 Cimi Suchontan, 222n12 cinema(s), 51, 94, 96, 100 City Pillar (Lak Muang), 29, 62 class consciousness, xxvii–xxviii class division, xx–xxi Clinton Plaza, 100, 147 Coedès, G., 44, 214n4 Communist Party of Thailand, 203, 206 community culture (school of thought), 171–2 Community Organization Development Institute (CODI), 157 complexity, as visual, functional and symbolic, 125

244

Index

condominium(s), 80–1, 83, 88, 98–9, 101, 104, 133, 162, 176, 189, 219n13 Condominium Act, 99, 101 constitution (principles) of 1932, 174, 217n16 Constitutional Court, xxi, xxiii, 103 consumption, landscape of, 45, 98, 116, 123 Cook, M., 138 Cornwel-Smith, P., 121, 191 corporatisation, 141–2 corruption, 137, 139, 165, 177–8, 202, 206 Council of State, 140 coups d’état, xxii, 3, 108, 122, 174, 205–6 of 1932, 30, 108, 200, 205 of 19 September 2006, xxi Crawfurd, J., 159 “creative destruction”, 102, 152 Crown Prince, 67, 111, 216n8 Crown Property Bureau (CPB), 51, 63, 90–2, 94, 96, 123, 197, 218n3 “culture” (watthanatham), 121 “culture of fear”, 78 Customs House, 55 Cuttaleeya Jiratprasertkun (Noparatnaraporn), xvii, 72–9, 83, 117, 160, 173, 217n18 Cuttaleeya Noparatnaraporn and R. King, 21, 39, 61, 72, 160 Cyber World Tower, 148–9 cyberspace, xxviii, xxix, 80, 126, 164, 208

Damrong Rajanubhap, Prince, 26, 39 Danish economic interests, 63 Davis Group, 102 Davis, R., 36–7 Davisi Boontham, 46 de zeen design magazine, 222n12

Dear, M.J., 143, 220n7 Deeb, L., 12 Democracy (Constitution) Monument, xxiv, xxvii, 34, 66, 68, 179, 181–2, 204, 208, 217n16 Democrat Party, xxiii, 206 development, see land/property development development control, 127, 176–7 Dhamma, 6, 11, 186 Dhammic socialism, 40 Dhammacakra (Wheel of Law), 217n16 dictionaries, 175 Don Muang airport, 129, 135 siege, xxii, 123, 182 Dovey, Kim, xviii, 34, 66, 181 Duangsai Luangpasee, 214n7 Duke, P.S., 178 Dusit, 25, 37, 40, 59, 85, 133, 161, 179 Dusit Thani Group, 96 Dusit Throne Hall, 24 Dutch, 2–3

East Asiatic Company, 55–6 East West Centre (Hawai’i), 187 Economy, 138–41 1990s boom, “Asian Economic Miracle”, 87, 138–9, 148 1997–1998 “Asian Crisis”, 87, 90, 98, 126–7, 129, 138–9, 141, 148–9, 152, 165, 191 as hybridised, 43 Global Financial Crisis, 140 Great Depression, 66, 90 informal, 107 edge cities, 220n7 Edwards, P., 120 Edwards, T.G. “Cowboy”, 100 Eggarin Anukulyudhathon, xvii

Index

Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, 221n22 elephant beggars, 106, 219n15 “Elephant Tower”, 188–9 embassies, 43, 55 Emerald Buddha image, 5, 7–9, 11, 15, 29, 34 fabled derivation, 214n4 English, see language and material (instrumentalist) imagination, 167, 169 authors, 168 “Enlightenment”, Western, 35, 44, 84, 85, 167 entertainment venues, precincts, 88, 92, 99–100, 112, 142–4 becoming “hotels”, 220n10 epistemology, 165–8, 175, 183, 195–7 epistemic colonisation, 167, 175, 196–7 Thai, “episteme of surfaces”, 1, 37, 78, 168–71, 196, 198 Erawan, 15 Erawan Shrine Foundation, 219n16 shrine, xxiv, 98, 113–5, 146, 191 eroticism, 120 Evans, J., Sister Joan, 155, 158 “events”, see uprisings expressways, 128, 134, 177 Port-Bangna, 154

Facebook, 208 families, “family values”, 169, 175 and property development, 169 Far Eastern Economic Review, 219n3 Farrelly, N., 208 feng shui, 148 Feroci, Corrado (Silpa Bhirasri), 22, 44, 174, 179–82 fetishisation of beauty, 121 Fifth Estate, 163

245

Finance Ministry, xxi, 140 Finance One, 139, 141 Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF), 138–9, 177–8, 222n6 Financial Sector Restructuring Authority (FRA), 149–50 Fine Arts, Academy of, 44 Fine Arts Department, 179, 182 First Thai Nation (political party), 103 floating markets, 107–8, 159 Fluendy, S. and J. Slater, 219n3 Fong, J., 30 Foucault, M., 119, 219n20 foundational myths, 8–12, 35–8 Fourth Estate, 163 Franco-Thai war, 66, 180 French, see language and Indochina, 44 and speculative imagination, 168–9 humiliation of Rama V, 34 in Ayutthaya period, 3, 221n1 “la mission civilisatrice”, 167 Front Palace (and Crisis), 28–30, 215n8 Fukien, 7 Funston, J., 213n11

gangs, 106 Garnault, Bishop, 167 Garnier, F., 11 Garreau,, J., 220n7 gay entertainment zone, 147 Gaysorn Group, 98 gender, 71, 117, 119–22, 219n19, 219n20 ambiguity, 117, 119–20, 122 gender-sex as spectacle, 119 gender-sex categories, identities, 119–20 Germany, 65

246

Index

Ghosh, B.N., 140 Giant Swing (Sao Ching Cha), 58, 218n5 Gill, T.A., 157 Gilquin, M., 42 Giuliano, G. and K.A. Small, 220n7 globalisation, 28 of academic activity, 198 of media, 126 go-go bars, 99, 101, 147, 164 Golden Mount, 8 Gorre, Bishop, 20 Government House, xxii–xxiii, xxvi, 26–8, 111, 164, 204 Grand Palace, 8, 22, 24–5, 28–9, 58, 62, 66, 179, 184, 205, 218n5 Great Depression, 66, 90 gridlock (traffic), 128, 176, 198 Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, 48, 84

Hack, G., 133 Haggard, S., 138 Halbwachs, M., 4, 215n12 Handley, P., 208, 214n12 Hanrahan, M., 155 Harris, T.D., 40 Hass, A., 143 Head, J., 110 Heidegger, M., 216n Henderson, V., 187, 222n10 herd mentality (in development), 138 Herzfeld, M., 59 heterotopia, 87 Hewison, K., 138, 172 hill tribes, xxv, 105, 163 Hindu(ism), 40, 48, 113, 215n13 historiography, 45, 195, 214n7 Hitler, A., 179 Ho Phra Keao (Vientiane), 9 Holy Emerald Jewel, see Emerald Buddha

Holy Rosary church, 20, 55–6 Hong Kong, 129, 152, 176, 219n16 Hong, L., 46 Hongkong Land Limited, 98 Hopewell Network, 128–9, 152, 163, 220n5 hotels, xxiv, 98, 133, 176, 220n10 Ambassador (Chavalit Mansion), 94, 101 Davis, 102, 219n13 Dusit Thani, 92 Erawan, Grand Hyatt, 92, 98, 113, 191 five-star, 55, 88, 99 Grace, 94, 101, 146 Grand Ayudhaya, 144 Holiday Inn, 98 Manhattan, 94, 101 Miami, 94, 101 Millenium Hilton, 183 Oriental, 55 Park, 94, 101 Plaza Athénée, 183, 194 Siam InterContinental, 92–3, 96, 98 Sofitel Lat Phrao, 135 housing estate(s), 75–6, 80–1 Hua Hin, 122 Hua Mak, 129 Hualampong Railway Station, 26–7, 62, 70, 129 Human Development Foundation (HDF), 155 hydraulic engineering, 72 hyperspace, postmodern, 123

Ibrahim Syukri, 216n21 India, 44 “Indianisation” of Southeast Asia (Coedès), 44 Indians, 46–9, 62, 106 Indra, 15

Index

integration-connectivity, 135 International Herald Tribune, 214n12, 220n9 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 139–40 Internet, xxviii, 112, 208 Isaan, xxxi, 9, 11, 41, 88, 106, 116, 122, 162–4, 193, 206, 219n15

Jackson, P., 35–7, 39, 108, 119–22, 219n18 Jackson, P. and N.M. Cook, 119 Jackson, P. and G. Sullivan, 119 Jakarta, 140 Jakose, A., 219n20 Jamiesen, M., 155, 158 Japan, 121, 141–2 “Little Japan”, 218n9 Japanese, 45, 147, 180, 201, 218n9 Jatuporn Prompan, 213n10 Jeerawan Prasomsap, 130 Jey Noy, 219n17 J+H Boiffils, 96 Jit Phumisak, 67, 217n14 Joan, Sister, see Evans, J. “judicial coup”, xxiii jus sanguinis (Chinese), 51 juxtapositions, 1, 12, 41, 70, 127, see also superimpositions

Kahn, J.S., 170 Kanjanapas family, 130 Karen, 172 Kasak Suek bridge, 88 Kasama Polikit (Bootsita), xviii, 79–80 Kasemson Palace, 89 Kasetsart University, 174, 196 kathoey, 119–22 Katz, P., 221n23 KFC, 142 Khaosan, 32, 118

247

Khlong, 21, 37, 59–60, 62, 65, 71–81, 88–9, 91, 99, 101, 107, 114, 122, 128, 135, 142–3, 153, 159–62 Khlong Bang Bua, 80–3, 107–8, 160–1, 176, 217n20 Bang Kapi, 89, 91 Bang Kruay, 2 Bang Noi, 108 Bangchuaknang, 75 Bangkok noi, 2, 17, 63, 159 Bangkok Yai, 2, 14–5, 17, 75 Bangraonok, 74 Chak Phra, 107 Hualampong, 91, 153 Lad Kret Noi, 2 Lad Mayom, 107 Ong Ang, 46, 50, 88 Paisingto, 91 Phadung Krung Kasem, 55, 58, 88, 218n5 Phra Khanong, 72, 77–8 San Saeb, 59, 72, 88–9, 91, 101, 116, 160, 162 Thanon Trong, 153 Wat Tonsai, 77 Khlong Toei (district), 62, 152–9, 220n16 market, 143, 159, 221n21 slums, 79, 83, 88, 105, 112, 143, 153–9, 162, 164, 220n18 Slaughterhouse neighbourhood, 155 Khmer, 15, 88, 186 Khoen Kaen (May 2010 burning), xix King, images of, 33, 37, 112, 144 King, R., 107, 168, 183, 215n, 222n3 King Taksin Bridge, 22 King-Oua Laohong, 110 Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects, 221n23

248

Index

Koolhaas, R., 189 Koompong Noobanjong, xxii, 222n7 Korat, 41 Korea(ns), 101, 147, 202 kreng chai, 37, 163, 169–70 Krisada Arongwongse, 192 Krugman, P., 139 Krung Thai Bank, 149 Krung Thep, 6, 213n3 Kuala Lumpur, 140, 144, 176, 208, 222n3 Kudijeen, 14, 21–2, 42, 77, 162

Lai, E., 152 Laird, J., 138, 219n2 LaMoshi, G., 218n11 Lamphai Intathep, 83 land development, 51, 89, 101 and public transport, 49 language and discursive colonisation, 166 English, 166–8 French, 167–8 language wars, 166 of architecture, 166, 178–82, 193, see also architectural style Lanna, 6, 34, 41–2, 193 Lao, 9, 35, 163, 179, 206 Laos, 11, 155, 206 larn wat (temple grounds), 80, 104 Las Vegas, 126–7, 143–4, 148, 152, 165 Caesars Palace, 144–6, 220n11 Fremont Street, “The Old West”, 144, 147 “Strip”, xxix, 143, 147 Law Enforcement, Department of, 14, 183 Legal Professional Co., 159, 221n21 Legg, S., 33–5 Leightner, J.E., 139 lepers, 106

lèse majesté, xxi, 11, 112–3, 147, 169, 208 Liebhold, D., 139, 141 lieux de mémoire, 33–5, 78 linear urbanism, 135, 137 Ling, T., 11, 40 Lingat, R., 214n4 Litchfield and Associates, 127 Lithai, King, 215n17 “Lords of things” (Peleggi), 33 Los Angeles, 220n7 Loubère, S. de la, 3 Loy Krathong, 35, 78, 215n13 Luang Prabang, 6, 8–9, 15, 214n5 Lumpini Park, 58, 85, 104, 123 MacDonalds, 142 Mae Khlong market, 217n11 Mae Khlong railway, 63 MahaNakhon project, 189–90, 222n12 Mahidol na Songkla, Prince, 89, 174 Mahidol University, 174 Maier, Father Joe, 106, 155–6, 158 Human Development Foundation (HDF), 155 Makkasan-Maenam railway, 63, 98 Makkhawan Rangsan bridge, xxiv Malay(si)a, 44–5, 51, 183 Mall Group, see The Mall Group malls, department stores, 88, 95, 104, 126, 165 Amarin Plaza, xxv, 98, 115, 191 Big C Ratchadamri, xxv Central Plaza Lat Phrao, 54, 135, 141 Central World Plaza, xix, xxv, 54, 89–90, 96–8, 115, 123–4 Emporium, 99, 104, 133, 142 Gaysorn Plaza, xxv, 94, 98, 142 Maneeya Complex, 92 MBK (Mahboonkrong) Centre, 94, 96–7

Index

Nana Square, 98 Phloenchit Centre, 98 Robinson department stores, 54, 141–2 Seacon Square, 141 Siam Centre, xxv, 94, 96, 141 Siam Discovery, xxv, 94, 96, 218n2 Siam Paragon, xxv, 32, 96–7, 123, 142 Times Square, 98 World Trade Centre, 96 Zen, iv (cover), xxv Manas Chitakasem and A. Turton, 215 Manee Sirivorasan, Khunying, 92 Mani, A., 48–9 Manich Jumsai, 175, 194, 221n4 markets amulet, 30, 107 Asoke, 94 floating, see floating markets street, 108 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 133 massage parlours, 100, 102–3 Caesars, 143, 147 Casanova, 145 Emmanuelle, 116, 145, 147 Hi-Class, 145 Poseidon, 116, 144, 147 May Department Stores Company, 142 May 2010 “event”, xix, xxiv–xxv McCargo, D., xxv, 110 Mead, K.K., 42, 214n3 meaning, constructions of, xxvi, 78 Melbourne, University of, 196, 217n20 Melford, E., 214n2 Memorial Bridge, 14, 22 Memorial to 14 October 1973, 68–9, 208 memory, nostalgia, 33–4

249

Mercy Centre, 155 microfinancing, 155, 157 middle-class fractions, consciousness, xxi, 41, 71, 80, 207 Middle-Eastern(ers), 98, 101–2, 106, 147 milieux de mémoire, 33–5, 78 Ministry of Defence building, 29 Missingham, B., 164 modernity, understandings of, 84 Mongkut, King, see Rama IV monocentric city idea, 133, 220n7 Montien Boonma, 186–8, 195, 207–8, 222n10, 222n11 Monument for the Suppression of the Boworadet Rebellion, 181 “moral panic”, 171, 173 Morris, R., 108, 120 Mosque Bang Luang, 17 Dylfallah, 17 Harun, 55 Kuwa Til-Islam, 12 landscape of mosques, 214 Phradungtham Islam, 17–8 Tonson, 17–8 Mount Vibula, 214 MRT subway (MRTA), 62, 99, 128, 135, 143, 153, 159, 177 mu’ang, 171–3 muang thai, 213 muban-chad-san, 75, 160 Mulder, N., 37–8 Muslim communities, 12, 14, 21, 42, 55, 78, 101, 160, 162, 176 as Siamese nobility, 17 Indian, 48–9 insurrection (South), xxv, 110, see also southern sultanates Malay-Muslim, xxv, 42, 110, 160 of Jaam (Persian) lineage, 16–7 separatism, 21, 162 Sunni, Shi’a, 17–8

250

Index

Mussolini, B., 179 myths, role of, 8–12, 36

Naga king, 9 Nagendra Kumar Singh, 42 Nai Lert, 49 Nakagawa, S. and Bussarakorn Sumrongthong, 219n16 Nakorn Sawan, 25 naming (as dilemma), 1, 6 Nana, A.E., 48–9, 62, 101 Nana BTS station, 105 Nana Plaza, 100, 146–7, 162 Nana, S., 216n2 Nana Srithammasak, xviii Nangklao, King, see Rama III Nantasarn Seesalab, 40 Narai, King, 2–4 Narathip, Prince, 49, 63 Naris, Prince, 22 Natenapha Wailerdsak, 54, 130 Nation, King, Religion (triad), xxvii–xxviii, 21–2, 28–9, 34, 57, 110, 125, 163–4, 169, 185, 198, 205–8 military as real centre of power, 29–31, 205 National Archives, 217n12 National Housing Authority, 83, 157 National Science Museum, 197 nationalism, xx Nattawut Preyawanit, 136 Nattaya Chetchotiros, 213 Navy, Royal Thai, 14–5, 50, 184, 214–5n8 Needel, Y.M., 164 neo-Classicism, see architectural style NGOs, 157 Nidhi Eoseewong, 78, 170–1 Niphot Thianwihan, 171–2 “no religion”, idea of, 40 Nonthaburi, 72, 74–7, 83, 160

Nora, Pierre, 33, 35, 78, 215n12 North Asian(s), 147 nostalgia, 33, 35, 72, 173 Nostitz, N., 213n11 Notton, C., 9 Noulmook Sutdhibhasilp, 172 Nukul Prachuabmoh, 138 Nuttinee Karnchanaporn, 160

O’Brien, David, xviii Odeon Circle, 52, 70 OMA (Office of Metropolitan Architecture), 189, 222n12 O’Neil, M., 221n2 Ong-art Sataraphan, 192 OP Centre and Garden, 55 Opium Wars, 49 Orientalism, 44–5, 167

pa thu’an, 171–3 PAD, xxi, xxvi, 110, 112, 123, 182 and “new” democracy, xxvii Pahurat, 22, 32, 46–8, 70, 216n1 Market, 48 Pak Mun dam project, 164, 221n22 Pak Nam Phra Pradaeng, 153 Pak Nam trail, 89, 91 Paladisai Sidthithanyakit, 61 Pallegoix, Bishop, 20 Parin, Claire, xviii Paris, 65, 85 Centre Pompidou, 194 Parker, H., 158 Parliament House, xxii, 66, 183–5 competition, 184–5 Parnwell, M.J.G., 172, 221 Pasinee Sunakorn, xvii Pasuk Phongpaichit and C. Baker, xxi, 138, 140 Patani, sultanate, 216n21 Pathumwan (Siam), 133

Index

Patpong “road”, 99, 122, 144, 146–7, 162 Patpongpanit family, 99 Patsinee Kranlert, 216 Pattaya, xxiv, 122, 182, 218n9 Pattrapon Vetayasuporn, 219n15 Peleggi, M., 25, 33–5, 40, 59, 85, 179, 193, 195, 197, 206 People’s Party, 65–6, 181, 200 “Performative state”, 35–8, 59 “performativity”, 219n20 Petchboon Palace, 89 Phanfa bridge, xxiv Phattayakosol family/House, 18–9 Phetchaburi, 178 Pheu Thai (political party), 213n9 Phibun Songkhram, Plaek, 65–6, 121–2, 174, 206 and fascism, 179, 183, 195, 205 dictatorship, xxiv, xxvii, 22, 179 Phillips, H., 37 Phra Bang (Prabang) image, 7, 9, 15, 214n5 Phra-Mahatavorn Chittasobhon, 89 Phra Nakhon, 3, 5, 54 Phra Racha Wang Derm Palace, 214–5n8 Phra Ram Ratchanivej (Gunner Palace), 179 Phra Sihing image, 9 Phra Thinang Phisansakhhon (Beachfront Palace), 178 Phraphuum, 38 Phraya Surasi, 6, 9 Phuket, 122 Phutsadi Thipphathat, 71 Pin Chakkaphak, 139, 141 Pinklao, King, 214–5n8 Pinyo Suwankiri, 186–7 Piriya Krairiksh, 25 Pizza Hut, 142 planning, see Bangkok planning plastic surgery, 121

251

plazas, 96–7 Police, Royal Thai, xx, xxii, 98, 123, 218n12 Pollard, J., 156 polycentric idea, 133, 220n7 Pongpipat, V., 214n7 Population Census(es), 127 Por Intalapalit, 171 Porphant Ouyyanont, 62, 90, 218n3, 218n4 Porphant Ouyyanont and T. Yoshihiro, 61, 65, 92, 99 Port Authority of Thailand, 153, 156–7, 159, 221n21 ports Chinese, 43, 50, 69 European, 43 Khlong Toei, 143, 153, 218n5 Ta Chang (Thai elite), 46 Portuguese, 2, 14, 19, 63, 162 postmodern(ism), 192–3 postmodern hyperspace, 123 Potjaman Na Pombejra, Khunying, 177, 222n6 Pracha Phromnok, 213n9 Prajadhipok, King, see Rama VII Pramane, see Sanam Luang, 25 Pramarn Chansue, 222n14 prang, 8, 15, 219n13 Prasat Thong, King, 2–3 Prasong Sukhum, 92 Prateep Ungsongtham Hata, 156, 158 Duang Prateep Foundation, 156–7 Prayurawongse, Somdet Chao Phraya, 217n22 Prayut Prayutto, 38–9 Preah Vihear, 110 Prem Tinsulanonda, xxv, 53 Pridi Banamyong, 65–7, 110, 174, 200 Princeton University, 153, 158 “privileged thieves”, xxiii

252

Index

Privy Council, xxv, 53 Privy Purse, 51, 89–90 property development, 126–7, 169, 171, 222n14 prostitutes, prostitution, 50, 88, 94, 99, 102, 105, 107, 122, 126, 141, 147, 163, 165 public-private dichotomy, 36 Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission, 221n21 Puey Ungphakorn, 204 Pum Malakul, 178 Pumin Varavan, M.R., xvii, xviii, 88, 91, 114, 170–1, 179, 218n1, 218n6, 219n17 Pusak Phongpaichit and C. Baker, 220n8

Queen, images of, 33, 112, 213n8

Radovic, Darko, xviii railways, see State Railway(s) Rajabhat University, 175 Rama I, xix, 5, 8–9, 14–6, 18, 30, 34, 39, 41, 88, 214n2, 215n18 and names, 6 as Rama Tibodi, 5 Phra Buddha Yotfa (Rama I) Monument, 22–3, 85 Rama II, 11, 15–6, 18 Rama III, 15–9, 30, 34–6, 39, 89, 160, 214n6 and Anuvong, 11, 214n7 and realpolitik, 11 royal versus popular Buddhism, 11, 30, 40, 163 Rama IV, 15, 30, 44–5, 49, 65, 67, 71, 89, 153, 168, 213n3, 214n6, 215n8, 215n9, 215n13, 216n9, 217n22 accommodation with the West, 55, 62, 120, 167

modernity, “Enlightenment”, 84–5 and selective modernisation, 36, 59, 85 as siwilai, 45, 85, 120–1, 195 Rama V, xx, xxix, 15, 19, 34, 41, 44, 48, 58–9, 62, 65–6, 69, 71, 74, 121, 171, 174, 193, 208, 215n9, 216n9, 217–8n22 accommodation with the West, 55, 119–20, 167 administrative centralisation, 85 and architecture, 24, 25–9, 178, 185 and surfaces, 59, 84, 122, 205, 207 and the “Theatre State”, “Performative State”, 35–8, 59 as collector, eclectic, 25, 33–4, 85, 122, 197, 207 as cult, 35, 85, 193 Rama VI, xxvii, 18, 45, 58, 63, 65, 85–6, 153, 174, 205 and architecture, 178 and Nation, 84–5, 195, 206 as Anglophile, 85, 104 policy on the Chinese, 42, 84–5, 178 Rama VII, 22–3, 30, 66, 86, 88, 205 Rama VIII, 17, 89, 215n10 Rama IX, 17, 19, 40, 67, 89, 111–3, 146, 169, 174, 187, 199–200, 205, 214n12 as transcendent, 112, 205 Birthday Address, 111 Ramon Magsaysay Award, 156 Randery Burah Makan Co. Ltd, 48 Rangsan Torsuwan, 98, 113, 148–50, 192–3, 197, 207–8 Amarin Plaza, 191 and Postmodernism, 191, 194 Bangkok River Park Condominium, 190–1

Index

Grand Amarin Plaza, 191 Grand Hyatt Erawan, 191, 193, see also Erawan legal difficulties, 192, 222n14 Sathorn Unique, 149–50, 163, 191–2 Silom Precious Tower, 148 State Tower, 56, 148–50, 191–2 Suanplu Garden, 191 Ratchaprasong, xxiv–xxv, xxvi, 54, 92, 98, 113, 123, 191 Ratchawangsanseni, Chao Phraya, 17 Rattanakosin, xxviii, 5, 6, 10, 12, 22, 25, 34, 37, 42–3, 58, 75, 84, 133, 177, 181, 186, 214n, 218n5 and superimpositions, 30–3 as landscape of confrontations, 22–30 Rear Palace, 174 recycling, 83 Red Gaur (Red Bull gang), 67 red-shirts, xix, xxiv–xxvi, xxviii, 11, 54, 58, 71, 89, 97, 110, 112, 163–4, 173, 181–2, 208 provincial/rural origins, xxiii Renan, E., 34–5 representation, 127 republicanism, xxvi Reynolds, C., xx, 4–5, 39, 44–5, 67, 170, 213n3, 214n5 Rhum, M.R., 171 Richard, F., 222n11 Rigotti, Annibale, 20, 25–7, 55 ritual/myth dichotomy, 36 roads, see thanon grid-lock, 127 outer ring road, 133–4 Robinson Department Store Public Co., 142 Robot Building (Sumet Jumsai), 194 Rohingya, 110 Ross, H., 177 Royal Institute, 175

253

Royal Plaza, 25 Rubin, R., 139, 220n8 ruins, 127, 150–2 of the culture, 162 landscape of, 98, 126, 148–52 romanticisation of, 165

saan chao ti, saan ta yai, 74, 76 saan phra phum, 74, 76 Said, E., 44, 167 saksit, 37–8 sala, 14, 186–8, 207 Sala Daeng, xix, 62 Samak Sundaravej, xxi, 42, 67 Samphan Thawong, 20 Sampheng, 7, 46, 48, 50, 65, 69, 71, 216n3 Lane, 48, 70, 216n3 Sanam Luang (Royal Field), xxvii, 25, 29, 34, 59, 66, 122, 164, 181, 199, 204 Sandhu, K.S. and A. Mani, 48 Sangha, 4, 6 Santa Cruz church, 14, 19–21, 26, 167–8 SAP, see structural adjustment package Sarit Thanarat, xxvii, 22, 67, 169, 206 Sawang Veeravong, 5, 7, 214n7 Sawang Wattana, Queen, 89, 218n2 SCB Park Plaza and Tower, 189 Scheeren, O., 189 Schumpeter, J.A., 102 Scott-Clark, C. and A. Levy, 218n12 screens, surfaces, 1, 84, 107, 163, 175, 181, 193 as legitimising, 87 as real, 37 as resistance, 169 “episteme of surfaces”, 78, 170 forms of, 32–3, 41 of consumption, 116

254

Index

of corporate capital (CP Group), 54, 104 of King (royal), 30, 104, 111–4, 144, 207 of Nation, 107, 110–1, 122, 207 of Religion, 30, 104, 107, 113–6, 144, 159, 163, 207 Thai love of, xxviii Seidenfaden, E., 26 Seni Pramoj, 67 Seoul, 133, 222n3 Seri Phongphit, 172 Seri Thai Movement, 201 sex industry, 99–100, 119, 122, 141 Shahrokhi, S., 12 Sharp, L. et al., 120 shophouses, 92, 94, 98, 104, 116, 138, 141, 150, 176, 188, 192 Si Racha, 218n9 Siam, as colonising power, xx, xxviii, 1, 11, 21, 79 Siam Commercial Bank, 25, 55–6, 90 Siam Electricity Company Ltd, 63 Siam Piwat Co. Ltd, 94, 96 Siam Society, 44, 101, 168 Siam Square, 81, 94, 96, 98, 129, 133, 141, 177 Siamese Tramway Company Ltd, 63 Sidh Sintusingha, xvii, xviii, 135, 176, 217n19, 221n25 Sikhs, 48, 216n1 Sila, V., 11 Silpa Bhirasri, see Feroci, Corrado Silpakorn University, 30, 44, 174, 182–3, 195, 197, 222n10 Simmonds, R. and G. Hack, 133 Sindhu, M.S., 49, 216n1 Singapore, 176 Sinnott, M.J., 119 Sirichai Bulakul, 96 Sirikit, Queen, xxii, 23, 67, 104, 111, 213n8

Sirima na Songkhla, xviii Sirindhorn, Princess, 90, 187 Siriraj Hospital, 174 Siva, 113 siwilai, 45, 65, 84 skywalk (Ploenchit, Sukhumvit), 98, 176 slums, 88, 90, 127, 159–63 Smithies, M., 4, 46 social divide Bangkok versus Muslim south, xxv, xxvi, 162 Bangkok versus rural, colonised areas, xxv, 162 class, xx–xxi, 126, 171, 205 red-shirt versus yellow-shirt, xxviii, 164 Sunni versus Shi’a, 17–8 Westernisation versus Islamisation, 102 Social Investment Fund, 83 soi, xxix, 69, 72, 76–7, 98, 105, 107, 135, 162, 176–7 Soi Asoke (Sukhumvit 21), 98–101, 105, 131, 142, 147, 152–3, 177 as central business district, 99, 133, 153 Cowboy, 100–2, 144–5, 147, 162, 165, 168 and “The Old West”, 144, 147 in song, film and fiction, 100 Lat Phrao 132, 83 Nana (Sukhumvit 3 and 4), 49, 100–1, 105, 121–2, 144, 147, 162 On-nut, 76–8 Sahakorn, 83 Sukhumvit 14 and 16, 100 Sukhumvit 18–24, 81, 99, 162, 219n13

Index

Sukhumvit 31–19, 101 Sukhumvit 33, entertainment zone, 147 Sukhumvit 107, 130 “Zero”, 100, 147 SOJOURN, 108 Somchai Wongsawat, xxi, 218n12 Sompong Amnuay-ngerntra, xviii, 178, 217n21 Somsak Jiamteerasakul, 90 Somsook Boonyabancha, 157 Somtow Sucharitkul, 194 Sondhi Limthongkul, xxi, 206 Songkran, xxiii Songtham, King, 3 Sonsun Nilkamhang, 88 southern sultanates, xxv, 12, 41, 193, 216n21 space, xxviii–xxix as disorder, 50 continuous versus bordered, 74, 76–9, 117 elite, 40 non-elite, 21, 127 spirit house(s), 74, 114, 124, 160, 163 spirits, and ecology, 78 as capricious, 39 spiritual landscape, 114 Sraprathum Palace, 89, 94, 123, 218n2 Sri Nakarindravivoj University, 175 Sri Thanonchai (legend), 89 Srisak Wallipodom, 30 Srislang Sooksomstarn, 219n16 Srisuwan Kuankachorn, 138 Starbucks, 127, 142 State Railway, Royal, 63 State Railways of Thailand, 129 State Tower, 56, 148–50 Stengs, I., 193 Step Ahead Micro Enterprise Development, 157

255

Steward, S., 35, 72 Stott, P., 171, 173 street stalls, 98, 107 “strip” (Ratchadapisek), 143 structural adjustment package (SAP), 140 stupa, 8 Suan Luang, 76, 81, 129 Suchinda Kraprayoon, 69 Suchira Payulpitack, 40 Sudara Sujchaya, 19 Suchart Sriyaranya, 198 Suehiro A., 54 Sujit Wongtes, 61 Sukhothai, 173, 186, 215n13 Sukhumvit corridor, xxiv, 87, 90, 133, see also Thanon Sukhumvit Sukhumvit Plaza, 101 Sukhumvit Square, 100, 102–3, 147 Sultan Sulaiman (family) branch, 17, 215n9 Sumet Jumsai na Ayutthaya, xvii, 183–4, 192, 194–5, 207, 216n9, 221n24, 222n15, 222n1 Mae Nark (opera), 194 Naga, 194–5 Sunate Bhotisan, 214 Sunate Suwanlaong, 71 Suntanee Phasuk and P. Stott, 221n5 Suntaree Komin, 169, 196–7, 222n16 Supalai Park towers, 189 Suparoj Wancharoen, 217n17 super-blocks, 134–6, 182 superimpositions, 1, 12, 33, 41, 70, 127 Supreme Patriarch, Buddhist, 4, 28 Surabaya, 140 Surapol Panyawachira, 200 surfaces, screens, masks (classification), 31–2, 41 Suriyawongse, Somdet Chao Phraya Si, 215n, 217–8n22 surviving communities, 71–9

256

Index

Suryadinata, L. and C.K. Ang, 70 Sutthiwong Phongphaibun, 39 Suvarnabhumi international airport, xxvi, 42 siege, xxii, 123, 182 skytrain link, 129 Suwaphat Sregongsang, 214n SV Garden, SV Group, 150–2, 163, 221n24

Tachapaiboon family, 90 Taiwan, 142, 219n16 Taksin, King, 4, 6, 8, 14, 17–8, 20, 22, 34, 41 architecture as legitimation, 4 as part Chinese, 42 Indian conceptions of kingship, 5 Monument, 22–3 palace, 15–6 Taling Chan, 107–8, 129 Tamagno, Mario, 20, 25–7 Tanabe, S., 168 Tanabe, S. and C.F. Keyes, 168 Tanayong Public Company Limited, 128, 130 Tarling, N., 44 Taylor, B.B. and J. Hoskin, 194 Technotani, 197 Teeraphol Niyom, 184 Tehran, 208 Tejapaibul family, 96 TelecomAsia, 53 Terdsak Tachakitkachorn, 72 Terwiel, B.J., 84 Tesco (Lotus), 141, 148 Tha Chin Railway Co. Ltd, 63 Thai Environmental and Community Development, 129–30 Thai nationalism, hegemony, xx “Thai regime of images”, 108, 169 Thai Rak Thai (political party), xx, 53

Thai values, also see kreng chai, 169–71 and globalisation, 170 “face saving”, 170 Thailand Cultural Centre, 148 Thailand Stock Exchange, xix Thak Chaloemtiarana, 222n2 Thaksin Shinawatra, xx–xxii, 41–2, 53, 110–1, 163, 172, 174, 177–8, 206–7, 213n8, 213n9, 218n12 and lèse majesté, 11 rhetoric, xxvi “Thaksinomics”, 163 use of mobile phone, xxiii, 208 Thammanat Prompao, 159 Thammasat University, 30, 66–7, 69–70, 122, 164, 174, 215n8 “Lan Pho”, 203–4 Memorial Sculpture Garden, 69, 199–208 Rangsit campus, 222n1 Thana Chirapiwat, 133–5 Thanachart Bank, 96 Thaniya, 147 Thanom Kittikhachon, 67, 206 thanon, 59, 72, 74, 77, 79, 160, 176 Thanon Arun Amarin, 15 Bamrung Muang, 58, 62, 218n5 Charoen Krung, xxix, 41, 43, 45–7, 50–1, 54–9, 62, 65, 69–71, 84–5, 90, 102, 133, 142–3, 150, 153, 168, 191, 216n8 as central business district, 51, 92 as “New Road”, 46 Itsaraphap, 17 Kalayana Maitri, 58, 218n5 Kaset-Nawamin, 134 Khaosan, 118 Kheha Phatthana, 154 Krung Kasem/Luk Luang, 62

Index

Lat Phrao (Latphrao), 134–5, 188 Na Phra Lan, 28, 30 Mahathat, 81 Nakhon Pathom, xxii Nawamin, 134 Pahurat, 48 Phahonyothin, 80, 130, 135, 137, 142, 152, 180, 188 Phetchaburi, xxv, 99, 147 Phitsanulok, 62 Phloenchit, xxiv, 58, 62, 87, 91, 93–5, 98, 106, 113–4, 130, 135, 142, 171, 218n5 Phra Chan (amulet market), 30 Phrasumen (Phra Sumen), 67, 112 Phyathai (Phya Thai), xxv, 94, 130 Prachathipok (Prajadhipok), 23 Rama I, xix, xxiv, 58, 62, 87–8, 91, 93–5, 98, 106, 123, 130, 135, 218n5 Rama III, 152, 221n24 Rama IV, xxv, 62, 91, 131, 142, 158, 219n13 Rama IX, 152 Ramintra, 134, 135 Ratchadamnoen, xxi–xxii, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxix, 26, 32, 40, 43, 58, 61, 65–9, 84–5, 122, 142, 178–9, 204, 217n13 aesthetic domination, 59 as “Champs Elysees”, 25 Ratchadamri, xxiv, 90, 98, 130 Ratchadapisek, xxix, 98, 100, 102, 131, 134, 148–9, 152–3, 158–9, 162, 164–5, 168, 177 and Las Vegas, 142, 144–5 and North Asian clientele, 147 entertainment zone, 112, 145, 146 Ratchawithi, 180 Samsen, 62

257

Sathorn, 57, 130, 191 Silom, xix, 57–8, 62, 80, 92, 106, 108, 122, 130, 142, 146 as central business district, xix, 80, 85, 99 Somdet Phra Chao Taksin, 22 Songwat, 70 Sukhumvit, xxix, 32, 49, 58, 63, 80, 87–109, 111, 113–7, 122, 130, 133, 135, 142–3, 146, 152–3, 160, 164, 171, 177, 218n5, see also Sukhumvit corridor as ephemeral, 101 “lower”, 105, 133–5 naming, 92 street market, 107–8 sub-cultures, 105–7, 171 Surawong, 92, 106, 142, 147 Tok, 62 Witthayu (Wireless), xxiv, xxv Yaowarat, 50, 62, 70, 216n4, see also Chinatown Thao Suranari, 179 That Luang (Vientiane), 8 The Age (Melbourne), 213n5, 213n7 The Economist, 214n12 The Mall Group, 96–7, 99 The Nation, 168, 173, 194, 218n1, 221n21, 222n14 The Nation building, 194, 222n15 theatre, same-sex, 121 “Theatre state”, 35–8 Thonburi, xxviii, 2–5, 10, 12–22, 45, 72, 75–6, 79, 160, 183–4, 186 Thongchai Winichakul, 59, 85, 216n20 Thongsohphit, N., 214n7 ti-chad-san, 75–6 time economy, 107, 113, 116 Tokyo, 133 Tomnak Keiw (green palace), 89 tourism, global, xxix

258

Index

Town and Country Planning, Department of, 140 Traibhum, 38–9, 184, 186 Traibhum Phra Ruang, 215n17 tramways, 62–5, 128, 216–7n10 Tri Mulati, 113 shrine, 114 True Corporation Plc, 53 tuk-tuk, 88, 105, 116, 122 Turton, A. and Manas Chitakasem, 170

UDD, xxiii–xxiv, xxvi, 112, 181–2, 213n10 Udomsri Buranasiri, 94, 218n6, 218n8 Udon Thani (May 2010 burning), xix Ukrist, Pathmanand and C. Baker, 53 Ukrit Kungsawanich, 83 underclass(es), xxvi UNESCO, 175 United Nations (UN), 140 universities, 174–5 University of Medical Sciences, see Chulalongkorn University University of Moral and Political Sciences, see Thammasat University Uprisings, 67 1973, xix, 67–9, 203 1976, xix, 34, 66–7, 203–4 1992, xix, 69, 204 Urban Community Development Office (UCDO), 157 Ussanee Petsawang, 108, 160 Utopia, 40–1

Vajiravudh, King, see Rama VI Van Der Cruysse, D., 167 Van Esterick, P., 37 Van Roy, E., 7, 19, 46, 50–1, 63, 69–70

Vanida Tantiwittayapitak, 164 Veena Thoopkrajae, 171 Veerayooth Kanchoochat, 53 Vella, W.F., 55, 178, 214n6 vendors, 94, 98, 105, 107, 113, 122, 159 Venice, 143 Victory Monument, xxiii, xxvi, xxvii, 66, 179, 181–2, 208, 222n8 Vientiane, 5–6, 8–9, 15, 89, 214n5 Vietnam, 7 Vietnam War, xvii, 45, 58, 94, 108, 146, 192 Village of the Poor, 164 Village Scouts, 67 Vipasai Niymabha, 108 Vishnu, 113 Vor Na Pramulmart, 171 Voronai Vanijaka, 175–6

walkways, concrete, 21, 77, 81–2 Wandee Pinijvarasin, xviii, 80, 162 wang, 30, 89 Wang Pechaboon Group, 96 Warr, P., 138 Warren, W., 216n8 Wat, xxvii, 35, 37, 75, 182–4, 192, 206 absence in east of Bangkok, 214n1 Wat Arun Rachawararam Rachaworamahwihan, 2, 14–6, 113 Benjamabopit, 26 Bowon Niwet, 67, 112, 113 Hong Rattanaram Rachaworawihan, 18 Jaeng, see Arun Kalayanamit Woramawihan, 14, 18 Klang, 83–4 Mahathat, 6, 28, 30–1, 66

Index

Molilokayaram Rachaworawihan, 16, 113 Niwet Thamprawat, 26 Paknam Fang Tai, 75, 160 Pathumwanaram (Wat Sraprathum), xix, 89, 94, 96 Prayoonwongsawas Worawihan, 14, 19 Phra Kaeo, 8–9, 15, 24, 30, 58, 113 Saket (Golden Mount), 8 Traimit Withayaram Worawihan, 50 Yannawa, 55–7, 150, 216n8 watthanatham (“culture”), 121 Westerholz, Aage, 63 Wichaprasit Fort, 3–4, 14–5, 17 Wichit Wathakan, Luang, 179, 182, 195 wihan, 17, 24 Wisarut Bholsithi, 217n12 Wiyada Thongmit, 186 Wolters, O.W., 44 Wongchirachai, A. Paravai, 222n11

259

Wongwian Yai, 130 Wood, W., 4 Worawan Nitbongkoch, 105 World Bank, 140, 221n22 World Trade Centre, 90 World War, Second, 108, 110, 121, 127, 153, 179–80, 201, see also Franco-Thai war Wright, A. and O.T. Breakspear, 63 Wu, G., 129 Wyatt, D., 39, 215n18, 219n19

Yaowarat, see Thanon Yaowarat Yap Kioe Sheng, 157 yellow-shirts, xxi, xxviii, 71, 110, 112, 182, 208 Yoshihide, S., 172–3 Yotfa, King, see Rama I Young, D., 170 Yuan, E., 158

zoning, 127, 137

260

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Index

261

262

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263

264

Index