Bangkok (Lonely Planet) - Andrew Burke [54]
To mark auspicious Buddhist calendar years, the royal barges in all their finery set sail during the royal gà·tǐn, the ceremony that marks the end of the Buddhist retreat (or pansăh) in October or November. During this ceremony, a barge procession travels to the temples to offer new robes to the monastic contingent and countless Bangkokians descend on the river to watch.
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WORKING FROM HOME: ARTISAN VILLAGES
Long before multinational factories, Bangkok was a town of craftspeople who lived and worked in artisan villages, inheriting their skills and profession from their parents. Many villages made stylised arts and crafts for the palace and minor royalty living along the fashionable avenues of the time. Today most of the villages remain, but the crafts themselves exist only in memories and old photos. You can, however, visit a few villages where the old ways live on.
Soi Ma Toom (Map; off Th Arun Amarin) is an example of the old home-and-factory paradigm. This quiet lane, just off a traffic-clogged artery in Thonburi, across from the Naval Department, is where the máđum (bael fruit) is peeled, cut into horizontal slices and soaked in palm sugar to make a popular candy.
Surviving primarily on tourist patronage, Ban Baat (Monk’s Bowl Village;) dates back to the first Bangkok king and continues to create ceremonial pieces used by monks to collect morning alms.
The silk weavers of Baan Krua no longer weave for Jim Thompson, but a couple of families are still producing high-quality fabrics from looms under their homes.
Near the old timber yards and saw mills, Woodworking Street (Map; Soi Pracha Narumit, Th Pracharat, Bang Sue) is still going strong with small Thai-Chinese-owned factories fashioning wooden eaves, furniture and shrines. Shops are open daily, and an annual street fair is celebrated in January.
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The museum consists of sheds near the mouth of Khlong Bangkok Noi. To get here take the 3B ferry across the river from Saphan Phra Pin Klao (N12) pier and follow the signs. Most longtail tours will stop here unless you ask them not to.
FORENSIC MEDICINE MUSEUM
Map
0 2419 7000, ext 6363; 2nd fl, Forensic Medicine Bldg, Siriraj Hospital; admission 40B; 9am-4pm Mon-Sat; Thonburi Railway (Tha Rot Fai, N11) or Tha Wang Lang (Siriraj, N10)
While it’s not exactly CSI, pickled body parts, ingenious murder weapons and other crime-scene evidence are on display at this medical museum, intended to educate rather than nauseate. Among the grisly displays is a bloodied T-shirt from a victim stabbed to death with a dildo, and the preserved but rather withered cadaver of Si Ouey, one of Thailand’s most prolific and notorious serial killers who murdered – and then ate – more than 30 children in the 1950s. Despite being well and truly dead (he was executed), today his name is still used to scare misbehaving children into submission: ‘Behave yourself or Si Ouey will come for you’. There are another five dusty museums on the vast Siriraj Hospital grounds, all with variations on the medical theme.
Given the huge construction project at the northern edge of the hospital grounds, the best way to get here is by express ferry or cross-river ferry to Tha Wang Lang (Tha Siriraj) in Thonburi, turn right (north) into the hospital and follow the signs; or just say ‘Si Ouey’ and you’ll be pointed in the right direction.
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BANGLAMPHU
Eating; Shopping; Sleeping
One of Bangkok’s oldest neighbourhoods, Banglamphu has more than one personality. In certain streets it’s a rundown version of the old aristocratic and artistic enclave of teak houses and tended gardens, with shirtless men sitting in front of ancient shophouses stuffed to the rafters with innumerable goods. In other streets it is brash and new, a cultural melting