Khlong Saen Saep · คลองแสนแสบ
Things worth knowing about the canal you're riding on, checked against the records. A few of them correct something almost everyone repeats.
The 1837 order was specific: from Hua Mak east to Bang Khanak, 53.5 km of it, out in Chachoengsao.
Nobody knows when the stretch through Bangkok was dug. Every pier on this site sits on that unexplained section.
พระราชพงศาวดารกรุงรัตนโกสินทร์ รัชชกาลที่ ๓, chapter 117
Recorded down to the last quarter-coin, timber and all.
The diggers were paid rather than conscripted — จ้างจีนขุดคลอง, "hired Chinese to dig the canal". Twelve metres wide, two deep.
Same chronicle passage
Digging began 30 December 1837. The Siamese–Vietnamese war it is always credited to began on 3 November 1840, by which point the canal was done.
It was built between two wars, not during one.
Every English account credits a British diplomat, D.E. Malloch, with writing that the mosquitoes here stung like "a hundred thousand stings".
He wrote nothing of the kind, and he was a trader, not a diplomat. There is a real mosquito line, by D.O. King, twenty years later. It says nothing about a hundred thousand.
D.O. King, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society Vol. 30 (1860), pp. 177–178
The popular explanation says it is Khmer for fresh water. It is Thai, and it means a stinging, burning pain.
There is a freshwater word in the story: สาบ. Different word, nearly identical sound.
ส. พลายน้อย, ศิลปวัฒนธรรม 16:2, 1994
And แสน is both "100,000" and "extremely", so Thai speakers hear "stings like mad" rather than a count.
Rama I gave the land to Cham soldiers who fought for Siam in the Nine Armies War of 1785–86.
They were living there half a century before anyone dug the canal beside them.
He bought from Baan Krua from 1948, from families weaving at home, and built his house directly opposite.
A hundred looms at its peak. One household still weaving today.
Nation Thailand, 26 April 2024
The Second Stage Expressway was routed straight through Baan Krua in 1987. Residents fought it from 1988.
The community is still there.
1908 — Nai Lert's เรือเมล์ขาว, the white mail boats.
1971 — unofficial long-tails to Ramkhamhaeng University.
1990 — the express service you ride now.
Deckhands work a ledge on the outside of the hull, and the bridges pass very low over it.
The canvas splash screens, by the way, are pulled up by passengers rather than crew.
In 2007 the Marine Department listed Ban Krua Nua pier, owned by the boat company, with a published fare to all 26 other piers.
The passenger figures for that same year show nine dashes. Nobody, all year. By 2014 it had gone from the register, with no record of why.
กรมเจ้าท่า pier and fare tables, BE 2550
Wikipedia has listed a "Wat Noi" pier since an uncited edit in 2011. วัดน้อย is a temple — the one the Marine Department uses to describe where Ramkhamhaeng 29 is. Somebody read the landmark as a stop.
Then the boat operator's website copied its pier list from Wikipedia, typos included. And Wikipedia now cites that page as its source.
Wikipedia revision history, กรมเจ้าท่า pier descriptions BE 2563, OpenStreetMap
Bangkok is building it in phases, due 2029. Some sections are done, others haven't been tendered.
Anything describing one continuous path is describing the plan.
Nothing is here unless the source was read, and the source is named underneath. Where two documents disagree, as they do about Ban Krua Nua, both are left standing.
Thai government records come first and English writing last. English material about this canal goes stale and then gets copied, which is how a 2018 fare and an imaginary pier are both still circulating.