Monday's Walk

More a chance to upload a few pictures. My daughter dropped me off near Pravet police station and I walked home in about 90 minutes. Went west along Klong Prawet Burirom then north on Klong Thap Chang and finally cross-country to home. A good walk as I haven't been doing that many recently. Below are some pictures you might enjoy.

A good looking banyan (fig) tree on the banks of Klong Prawet Burirom. There is another directly behind it. The canal is to the left of the footpath.

Unusual to see a new house on a estate with access to the klong. This one even has a boat crane.

A splendid roof on this moslem family's home on a side canal off Klong Thap Chang

New Local Walk

I have been meaning to do this walk for a while. It's close to where I live so no driving. All up I was back home in just over an hour. I had been putting it off because it's not much of a canal, more just a wide ditch and it has pathways only in sections.

Anyway in the map below you can see it shown in blue dots. I had walked as far as I could on the southern end before and then realized, after I crossed under the motorway, that I had also walked the last couple of hundred meters on the northern end before. About the most interesting thing on this walk was having to take my shoes off to paddle through two flooded sections. The night-time rains have been heavy this last week. I did notice some more traditional style Thai houses by the side of this canal. There are far more of these than I would have thought a year ago.

Needed badly to get some exercise. Now when I don't walk off some inches from around my stomach it physically hurts so I have an extra incentive, walk or pain-killers. I walked the rest of Klong Banma so I know the entire lenth from Klong Prawet Burirom to Klong Saen Saeb is walkable except for the first 200 meters at the southern end. The red dots show today's walk and the blue dots previous walks.

This part of Klong Banma doesn't have much going for it. No old communities on it, just more recent ones. There are new (less than 30 years old) housing estates mainly walled off from the klong and more recent very basic homes of rural migrants. Neither of these groups would produce votes for city hall if the upkeep of the canal footpaths were better. The housing estates because they don't use the canal and the migrants because they can't vote in Bangkok. Hence the footpaths are pretty bad. (I think if I were in city hall I would try and sign up all the rural migrants onto the voting list. Tammany Hall style for sure.)

I had to backtrack two times, the first one adding a good 15 minutes to the walk, because of the footpath condition. Below a section has dropped into the water.

Below the footpath just runs out before the bridge. Usually you find some sort of access to the bank but here I had to backup a hundred meters and finda path on land.

It was a rather depressing walk until I came upon this water feature and sala at the back of an apartment house. The water bubbles down the rocks to the two imitation storks below. They have made a fine back garden for the apartment dwellers here.

Klong Ban Ma or Klong Banma

I'm getting very slow. I just realized that the small canal I walked down to get to Klong Saen Saeb has the same name as the klong that is just up the road from me. My excuse is age and the differences in English spellings of Thai names. I have been referring to my local canal as Banma and this was Ban Ma. I should have picked that up straight away though. Ban Ma or Banma though is quite complicated route with many canals joining, right-angles and so on. This does give me a challenge though, a walk from one end, Klong Prawet Burirom, to the other end, Klong Saen Saeb.

The spelling thing is a problem. I have always used "klong" although now on official signs and much of the internet it's "khlong". The "Prawet" in Klong Prawet Burirom is spelt "Prawes" as the district and I have used Pravet in the past which is closer to how it sounds. For Klong Phrakanong we could use Phra Khanong, Phrakhanong, Prakhanong and so on.

Thursday's Walk

Almost a regular walk to the temple, Wat Krathum Sueapla, and back but I did deviate it so part was on Onnut Road to make more of a loop. At the top of one of the lanes I took to get to Onnut, Soi 61, was this small temple with both Buddhist and Hindu statues. You can see taking the major spot is Ganesh or Ganesha as Wikipedia has it now.

At Wat Krathum Sueapla they have a pair of tall trees with barriers at their base so I guess these might be krathum trees as in the name of the temple.

This glass and mirrored building in the grounds is outstanding.

This hall is fairly new looking.

Two Walks - Two Days

Have been walking but not blogging. Walked 4 kilometers on the southern side of Onnut road on Wednesday and 6 kilometers on an often done walk to Wat Krathum Sueapla today. I will give more detail another day, maybe the weekend but here are few visual tasters.

Below is a real Bangkok floating market. The fruit and vegetable seller was stopping off at most of the klong-side houses.

The rubbish truck depot with the stack of rear axles and differentials I mentioned on Sunday. I took this photo after driving into the landfill area and from the road bridge over Klong Song Hong into the depot.

The two smoking stacks in Tuesday's photo actually belong to a medical waste incinerator.

The other stack hasn't been used for a while. I do vaguely remember a pilot waste incinerator project from quite a few years back. From the web it sounds like not incinerating is a good thing for the environment.

And finally a gold frog with golden coin in its mouth from Wat Krathum Sueapla. There must be a story about this somewhere.

Klong Prawet Burirom

Today I walked for a couple hours along "Klong Prawet Burirom". This is the large klong very close to where I live. A five minute walk gets me onto the canal path. For the second day I went east to "Wat Krathum Sueapla". A wat is a buddhist temple. The reason I went back that way today is the local authority has put up three signboards outside the temple. They have probably been there a long time but I only noticed them yesterday.

One has a map showing a bicycle touring route along canal paths and small roads. One has the history of the klong and the last the history of the temple. I will start with the temple, pictured below.

Wat Krathum Sueapla takes it names from the krathum trees and fishing cats (sueapla) that were common when it was built in 1802. I must admit I'm not sure what a krathum tree looks like but I have seen a fishing cat in the zoo and they are in Wikipedia. I don't think they have lived around here for long time. People were making merit today feeding tame fish in front of the temple. I will do more on this temple another time.

Klong Prawet Burirom was built in 1877 to link the eastern suburb of Bangkok called Samut Prakan with the next river to the east, the Bang Pakong. It's 47 kilometers long and took 3 years to build. So now I know more about local history that I learnt in the last twenty-five years or os of living here.