Back to football and walking

Over the last year I haven't posted either about my football team or walking along the Bangkok klongs. The football was because it was such a horrible season from the beginning and the walking because I did fewer and spent too much time on UK politics.

Well I have still kept up walking new klongs although far from regularly but the next post will cover the last two Sundays east of the new Bangkok airport. With football Charlton are having a great start to the season so I will start posting results again.

Watergate Problems

Here's a link to yesterday's Bangkok Post Outlook section article on a klong community at Wat Sai. Building a watergate had almost destroyed their traditional way of life. I suspect it wasn't so much the watergate as the bureaucratic control of the opening and closing of the gate. The men at the various gates do not have the authority to do this without the say so of someone behind a desk working office hours.

We see it over on this side of Bangkok also. At times when water could be let through to the river at low tide it isn't and areas upstream are flooding. Even on my own housing estate the pumps should be used to lower the lake levels before the rains start rather than after the roads are flooded. Many government departments are decentralising and maybe the Irrigation Department needs to as well. If the watergate workers became more like English lock-keepers and could control their gates it would be better. We might even get some klong tourism like they do in England with the narrow boat tours.

Split this Blog

I have been thinking about splitting this blog. Maybe my minority views on UK politics don't really fit in with canals and walking although that's where I fine tune them;-) On the internet we tend to niche everything. The more we niche the easier it is for people to find us. So maybe I will take new political posts onto a new blog. I will ponder this some more.

Picking up from yesterday

I wanted to fill in the gap between the walks from yesterday and last week. Drove back to the temple I reached yesterday and parked there. I still don't know this temple's name or the name of the small klong I've been walking. Not much to say about the walk as it's mainly rural. In the map below you can see the temple. From there it's north under the Bangkok Ring Road. There was another small klong heading north but I followed the klong to the right. Walked to the end where it joins Klong Thap Chang and turned south to where Klong Buang Kwang joins it. That completes the loop so walked back to the temple.

Below is the the beginning of a new (to me) canal heading north. Maybe another day. I went to the right here.

A bit of natural history seen today. The storks below, (I think they are Asian Open Bill Storks), are regular annual visitors. I heard they like the apple snails, an introduced species whose population just exploded here. Just looked in Wikipedia and they say they are of American origin and were first introduced into Taiwan and spread from there. They were meant to be a human protein source but it seems not many like the taste. I rarely see anyone collecting them except for fishing bait. They seem to be spreading rapidly and their red egg sacs are often visible attached to reeds or plants. Hopefully the storks will keep them under control.

Below, the base of the tree trunk looks more like it belongs in an Amazon jungle. I wonder if that's and introduced species as well.

Why Klong Walking

In our district the communities that live along the klongs are mainly moslem. In the picture below you can see some of the local ladies heading to the mosque. Being moslem gives the walker a big advantage - No dogs. The locals are not as fond of having dogs around as their buddhist neighbours in the nearby housing estates. No dogs, as any postman will tell you is a good thing. Not only no yapping but no crap on the pathways.

So that's why I walk on the klongs, but why walk anyway and why the blog? At this point, dear reader, I'm going to use the dreaded word, therapy, and it might be time to give up on this blog. The walking is both physical and mental therapy while the blog might be a mental one with a bit of luck. Some of what I think about on the walks might show up here but I will try and mix it with some local cultural information and pictures to lighten the mood.

Klong Footpaths

Over the last six months or so most days I walk for 50-90 minutes. This isn't because I'm that keen on exercise. Like many others I have no real choice if I want to get well again. Not that I'm that unwell, but this I will explain later when I want to bore anyone unluckily enough to be reading this blog.

A klong is a Thai canal and from now on I will use klong instead of canal. I live in Bangkok suburb that has many klongs or various sizes. In some places the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), the city council, have put footpaths on the side of the klongs. These paths are not continuous and are to serve the communities that live along the klongs. Below you can see paths on both sides of this rather large klong. Enough for the first post. Maybe tomorrow I will tell why the walking and why on the klong footpaths.