Bangkok, une ville née des eaux – Chao Phraya – Mont d’Or – Documentaire Voyage – AMP

Bangkok, une ville née des eaux – Chao Phraya – Mont d’Or – Documentaire Voyage – AMP

Bangkok… A city bristling with concrete and steel, a sort of tropical Manhattan where fifteen million inhabitants gather… In Thai, its name is “The city of angels ”. We couldn’t say it better for a capital that has soared towards the sky. But Bangkok is above all the place where eras and cultures collide.

Modernity rubs shoulders with the gold of temples, the riches of palaces, and the simplicity of the humble. And above all, life which vibrates and never goes out. Bangkok is above all a river, the Chao Phraya. And it is by following it that we

Discover the history and the soul of this city born from the waters. The Chao Phraya River has the sometimes destructive power of the Yellow River, the abundance of the Amazon, and the religious dignity of the Ganges. It is on its banks that life has spread out, without control,

Like an organism endowed with its own will. It all started on the banks of the river, but 70 kilometers upstream, when Thailand was still called Siam. Its capital, Ayutthaya1, nestled in the hollow of a meander.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the city was one of the most beautiful and most populated in the world: one million inhabitants, when Paris, for example, had only 600,000. Ayutthaya, listed as a world heritage site humanity, resembles an open-air museum. Four hundred archaeological sites can be seen there: temples, hundreds of Buddha statues.

The palace of the eighth king of Ayutthaya bears witness to this grandeur… Foreign dignitaries who came to request commercial rights were received there. Many monuments have been, like him, reconstructed at Ancient Siam, an amusement park south of Bangkok. There we admire, for example, a pavilion with green roofs, dedicated to five hundred monks

Who, after numerous cycles of reincarnation, reached nirvana. Pavilions of the Royal Palace in Bangkok have been reconstructed as they were at the beginning of the 19th century. Ancient Siam also takes us back to the time when people lived, traded and fought on the water, aboard sometimes very imposing junks.

The grandeur of Ayutthaya insulted the pride of the hereditary enemy, Burma. In 1767, it was burned, razed and destroyed. The oldest temples, recognizable by their prang, a corncob-shaped turret housing relics, were desecrated and ransacked. From this chaos was born Bangkok. Indeed, a general, Taksin, built downstream, on the

Right bank, the new capital of Siam. Bangkok was born. Declared insane and executed, King Taksin was replaced by another general, Chakri, who became Rama I, founder of the dynasty which still reigns today. The river is the artery without which the heart of the city could not beat. Its

Waters teem with junks, speedboats and boats that connect the two banks… …But also a typical boat: the long tail boat. It is a boat equipped with a propeller attached to a metal rod, itself connected to a truck engine. Somchai has been piloting his long tail boat for fifteen years. It mainly transports tourists,

But also city dwellers wishing to avoid traffic jams on land routes. He knows Chao Phraya and its secrets better than anyone. In front of its bow the entire history of Bangkok unfolds. Starting with the religious symbols which gave legitimacy to political power. Here is Wat Arun2, the temple of Dawn…

When the capital was established on the right bank, Khmer tradition had imposed temples in the shape of a cone, an ear of corn, or a mountain. The Temple of Dawn was built in this style. It is adorned with statues of animals, warriors, bird women, and decorated with fragments

Of mirrors and broken porcelain which served as ballast for Chinese ships of the time. Four turrets are dedicated to the divinity of the wind, perched on her horse. The central prang rises to 82 meters. Somchai3 only has to cross the river to follow the movement of occupation which

Occurred at the creation of the city. The left bank was easier to defend. It was therefore decided to extend the capital there. The Rattanakosin district became the seat of central power. A giant swing was first erected, according to Hindu custom.

We rushed forward to create merit… and to unhook with our teeth a bag of coins attached to a pillar. Some were, by accident, thrown into the void: the practice was abandoned. The pillars were cut from teak trunks 30 meters high.

When the boat approaches the bank, a fabulous group of buildings comes into view. It is the royal palace, whose majesty has nothing to envy of Versailles or Schönbrunn. The monument, where the king does not reside, occupies 29 hectares on the banks of the river.

Fearsome deities guard the sacred places: the royal pantheon with its bright colors, and multiple buildings, pavilions and chedis, domes in the shape of bells under which relics rest. During the second half of the 19th century, Siam opened up to the Western world. On

The new buildings, the throne room, for example, the Siamese decorations are placed on an architecture inspired by Europe. Religion serves as a pillar of political power. This legitimacy must be visible. It is therefore within the palace grounds that we admire

The sacrosanct emerald Buddha. Three times a year, the king comes to adorn him with clothes woven with gold and precious stones. The river dictating its law, the royal palace was built in the immediate vicinity of the mouth. It was therefore necessary to fortify it from the 17th century. Indeed, the estuary

Offered an entry route to ships coming from France, Holland, England… Forts were built to repel them. This military presence continued. So that the king and the court could get some fresh air, a second royal palace was erected near ancient Ayutthaya: the Summer Palace, where European, Thai and Chinese architectural influences intertwine.

At the end of a bridge decorated with Greco-Roman statues, numerous buildings stand out: …royal residence, pavilions, Buddhist temples, and even an observation tower whose shape evokes that of a lighthouse. One of the most beautiful buildings is a Chinese pavilion.

To consolidate the religiosity of the royal palace of Bangkok, it was adjacent in 1788 to a large temple, one of the most visited in the city, Wat Po. It houses a statue of Buddha on his deathbed, at the time when , the cycle of reincarnations

Completed, he will reach nirvana. The statue is gigantic: 46 meters in length, and 15 in height. The feet are remarkable: inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and decorated with figures representing the 108 avatars of Buddha, that is to say all his incarnations prior to enlightenment.

Near the royal palace, still on the banks of the river, the buildings where power is exercised, such as the main ministries and, in particular, that of defense, were grouped together. However, near these austere and imposing facades, we discover several points of attraction popular with tourists.

In particular, the famous Kao san Road, popularized by several generations of hippies and backpackers. Vibrant day and night, it is lined with hotels where you can stay inexpensively , shops that print fake diplomas, and massage parlors. Not far from there, devotees frequent the amulet market. Some are old,

Others blessed by a famous monk. The price of the rarest can reach several tens of thousands of euros. Religion plays an essential role for Thais. To ward off bad luck, long-tailed boat pilots wear amulets around their necks, like many of their compatriots.

From the peaks of Bangkok, we can see everywhere varnished roofs, golden points bristling towards the sky. They are temples. There are more than 400 of them. The most visible temple is Wat Saket4, which is called the Golden Mount. A colossal dome houses a Buddha relic from Sri Lanka. It dominates this

Ancient royal burial site. To reach the temple, you have to climb 344 steps. Statues of animals and child monks brighten up the route. Wat Saket is marked by death. From the beginning, corpses were cremated there. During the first half of the 19th century, epidemics killed thousands of people

: it was impossible to be satisfied with cremation. The dogs and the vultures charged to clean up the remains. The vulture statues remind us that everything is transitory and that we should not get attached to anything. Like religion and power came commerce, and with it wealth.

On the banks of the river stands the ruined palace which was the temple of commerce. It was here that a 3% tax was imposed on goods. The building was built in the European style. It will soon become a five-star hotel. The river has always attracted people: formerly traders, importers, adventurers. Today tourists.

The river plays an essential role in the transport of goods and people. Numerous canals open onto the river. They are called klongs. They earned Bangkok its nickname of Venice of the Orient. By browsing them, we discover what the habitat of the Thais was like. The inhabitants built

Their houses on stilts, or on floating structures which have now disappeared. Only nobles, notables and monks lived – what a privilege – on dry land. The locks sometimes cause happy traffic jams… The boatmen all know each other. It’s the time to chat, to joke, to exchange information…

Even today, between two locks, fish or vegetable sellers slide their floating stalls from one house to another. The canals served as streets, because in the city itself, built on marshes, it was necessary to wait until 1862 for the construction of the first real paved road.

Bus boats speed along the canals. They are an inexpensive and fast means of transportation that tens of thousands of passengers use every day to get to work. From the narrowest to the widest, Bangkok’s canals run a total length of 2,604 kilometers.

The abundance of two wheels, less expensive and more agile than a car, characterizes most major Asian cities. In Bangkok, ferries are reserved for them. The canals are also a destination for walks, increasingly frequented by tourists. Bangkok’s traffic jams are among the most famous in the world. Multi-colored taxis

Give them a shimmering appearance, but they nonetheless remain one of the worst annoyances in the city. So we had to think of solutions. An elevated train system was put in place. An underground metro was dug more recently, fast and modern.

These networks continue to expand, to the point that the name of the terminals changes almost every month! A royal road, the Chao Phraya is also the one by which foreign populations who contributed to the growth of the city came. The Chinese settled in a still wild area, today one of the most

Vibrant Chinatowns in the world. A monumental door marks the entrance. The words heaven and earth are calligraphed there. Yaowarat Street serves as the backbone of the neighborhood. It was drawn up to limit the effect of fires. Around it is woven a network of alleys where people trade like in Shanghai:

Sea cucumbers, Peking ducks, medicinal mushrooms, dried octopus, medicinal powders… The Chinese have assimilated but kept their religion and built temples, in the style of the Guangdong region, where most of them came from. They made them centers of solidarity. They financed the development of the country.

They adopted local-sounding surnames. They blended into the population. Nowadays, 80% of national wealth, and most of the political power, is in the hands of families of Chinese origin. This explains why the country’s first modern bank was built in their neighborhood in 1908.

The Sol Heng Tai mansion, 200 years old, testifies to the antiquity of the Chinese presence. Bangkok did not yet exist when a rich Chinese family from Ayutthaya had it built. This family still occupies it today. The manor is made up of four houses and an interior courtyard.

The style and ornamentation of porcelain and teak are those of southern China. Bangkok’s Chinatown is also a center of street art known throughout the world. Young artists make their first steps there. Some of them are today exhibited in international art galleries. Other traders and entrepreneurs settled in Siam from the beginning: the Indians.

The Sri Maha Mariamman5 Hindu temple was built in 1860 by Tamil migrants fleeing English occupation. At the entrance is a six meter high tower, the gopura. The countless deities of Hinduism are represented there. We recognize, infinitely duplicated, Ganesh, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu…

An Indian community has been established around the temple and thrives in particular in the art of cutting dresses, shirts, suits or pants… There are thus 100,000 people of Indian origin who live here. Some of them, belonging to a Sikh community, chose another district in the 19th century: Pahurat6.

The Sri Guru Singh Sabha Sikh temple is the second largest in the world, outside Indian borders. Sikhs believe in a powerful, benevolent god to whom all other religions can lead. They think that we go from one reincarnation to the next, according to karma.

The temple preserves the sacred book, consisting in particular of the writings of the first guru. Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam and Christianity are very much in the minority in Thailand, an essentially Buddhist country. The Thais want religion to help people instead of constraining them. This is

Where we can see it best. The small Erawan sanctuary cannot claim the rank of temple. It is only a place of meditation, at the corner of one of the most congested intersections, dedicated to Brahma, a Hindu deity and the god of creation.

However, it is the one that arouses the most total devotion among the Buddhists of the city. The sanctuary has had a history rich in twists and turns. It all began in 1956 when construction work on a neighboring hotel was affected by accidents.

To ward off bad luck, an astrologer recommends building a place dedicated to the spirits of the place. We come to pray for the success of a child in an exam, to find a job, to obtain the healing of a sick loved one… The offerings are of all kinds:

Elephant statues, and even music and dances that can to please the deity. Thai Buddhism is the so-called “first vehicle”, less rigorous, for example, than Tibetan Buddhism. In Thailand, a small altar is dedicated to the spirits of the place, before beginning the construction of a building.

Astrologers decide on its location, and their opinion takes precedence over that of architects. The Thais integrated some Hinduism into Buddhism. Likewise in cooking, they assimilate the best of other cultures. The ingredients and preparation methods come from all over the world… particularly from India and China.

This is some of the best street food in the world. Each stall, each handcart , offers the country’s most succulent specialties… Some establishments have even achieved worldwide notoriety. Wattana Panich, for example, serves her customers a soup whose richness comes from a secret

: its beef broth is 45 years old! It never stops cooking, except overnight . The recipe, passed down from generation to generation, includes: meat, coriander noodles, star anise, cinnamon, garlic, and a sachet of Chinese herbs and spices whose composition is kept secret. Twenty-five kilos of fresh meat are added to it every day.

Street food is a foodie’s delight. Jai Fai7, known as Auntie Fai, 73 years old, was awarded a star by the Michelin guide during its first edition dedicated to Bangkok. Since then, we rush to admire him at the controls of his two woks, his eyes protected from grease splashes by ski goggles.

Aunty Fai is now making her reputation pay. Its extra large crab omelette costs almost 30 euros, making it the most expensive in town… Cuisine is an integral part of the Thai way of life, a way of being that is

Gradually being lost in modern life …and whose motto was mai pen rai: it doesn’t matter, nothing matters. You can get a better idea of ​​this way of life by visiting a traditional house. It belonged to a former prime minister, great-grandson of King Rama II.

The typical dwelling is made of teak, a rot-proof wood. It is made up of five century-old houses on stilts, decorated with a garden and a lake. The large banquet hall has a platform where the masked artists of khon8, the traditional theater, performed

. Private lounges, reading or music rooms are located in the different houses. They house works of art, sometimes donated by foreign dignitaries, such as Deng Xiaping or Mao Zedong. Some of these private residences, belonging to noble families, had their own pier overlooking the canals.

Bangkok is changing and modernizing so quickly that one family wanted to transform their house, built in 1937, into a museum that documents the way of life during World War II and the mid-20th century. Everything seems frozen, as if the occupants had left the place the day before.

This is how life went in the past, when people still lived in the shadow of the stilts. Bangkok still suffers from the wrath of nature. From July to November, the rains change the appearance of the city. However, the inhabitants do not want to submit to its law. They adapt, more alive than ever.

The rain, added to the widespread use of air conditioning, gave rise to a new human ecosystem: the Asian shopping center. In summer, we look for coolness, and in the rainy season, a shelter where we can stay dry. These gigantic temples of consumption have become places of life frequented

By millions of visitors and a central element of the way of life in major Asian cities. They bring together under one roof shops, restaurants, bars, luxury boutiques, department stores, convention and exhibition centers… But also ultra-modern cinemas, aquariums, tourist attractions, gyms , bowling alleys, swimming pools or mega bookstores…

You can buy luxury cars or racing cars there. The city never reveals itself better than from its peaks. It resembles a dry and mineral universe, inhospitable, carved out of concrete and steel. However, a green square appears in the distance. This is Lumpini Park. It was created just after the First World War.

It is decorated with a clock to the sound of which the city’s inhabitants set their watches… …and a red flag offered by China. This public garden seems very small: only 58 hectares. Bangkok offers 6 square meters of green space to each of its inhabitants, compared to 45 in London or 15 in Paris.

Lumpini Park is not the largest in the city, but it is in the heart of beautiful neighborhoods, such as Central Park in New York. People come there to play sports… to relax… or to admire the way in which wild nature is regaining its place in a universe

From which we thought it was excluded. We sometimes meet unexpected people. On lawns, and sometimes on the branches of trees, the Malayan monitor lizard lounges. Some individuals reach 3 meters in length. Here they find the bodies of water where

They spend most of their time, the hiding places where they lay their eggs, and the fish, insects, chicks and grasses on which they feed. The Malayan monitor lizard is timid. It enchants visitors, without representing the slightest danger for them. At the heart of one of the

Largest cities in the world, Lumpini Park offers wildlife a sort of refuge, reminding residents that their city was built less than two centuries ago on a jungle populated by tigers and elephants. . Buddhism aims to be welcoming to all forms of life. This is why in the

Park, the temples open their enclosures and their bodies of water to animals. Turtles, in particular, tend to proliferate, but their presence attracts visitors, as well as alms. When, from altitudes, the gaze sweeps over the urban landscape, the true green lung

Of Bangkok appears in the distance. A meander of the river surrounds it. Protected from urbanization by government decision since the 1970s, it is a real piece of jungle embedded in the capital. We call it Bang Krachao. Once the fury of the city is forgotten, we walk between mango trees, banana trees, coconut trees,

Pepper trees and papaya trees. To reach this green oasis, you had to cross the river. A small hotel was built on the banks of the river. It is the tallest building in Bang Krachao. From its highest terrace, you overlook the canopy. The hotel was built with bamboo and wood from a

Forest-friendly sector and recycled materials. The restaurant does not serve meat, but organic vegetables and fish. The laundry is dried in the open air, the waste is composted, the energy is provided by the sun and the wind. We collect rainwater. Plants filter the pool water.

There is no air conditioning, and insects sometimes creep into the rooms. This is the price to pay for this true return to nature. Bangkok, a sprawling city that cannot expand horizontally indefinitely, has not finished climbing towards the clouds. To make room for all its inhabitants, the city had to grow vertically.

Thus began a race to heaven. With its 304 meters, the Bayoke 2 tower , inaugurated in 1999, held the record for a long time. It is placed on 360 reinforced concrete pillars which extend more than 50 meters into the ground.

It has been dethroned since 2016 by a magnificent building, 314 meters high, designed by a German architect. Here he invents a dystopian architecture, that is to say an aesthetic of collapse. A fault seems to fracture the entire tower, as if it would collapse soon.

A pixelated spiral runs through the tower from top to bottom, which multiplies the balconies and terraces. As if to underline the dizziness that should seize every man in the perspective of this end of the world, a footbridge has been stretched above the void…

It has become one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city. We come from all over the world to scare each other. The glass, treated to offer the best transparency in the world, gives the visitor the impression that they are floating above the city.

From above, the world appears different. The view plunges into the life of city dwellers, who have adapted their living environment to match their environment. Swimming pools… …heliports, play areas for children, sports fields and hanging gardens: New territories had to be conquered…

A new city has appeared, which might never set foot on land again… At least 8.5 million inhabitants in the heart of the city and 15 in the urban area live at the bottom of these steel cliffs, on an area

Fifteen times larger than that of a city like Paris. You have to transport them, feed them, take care of them. The dizziness of the unknown is added to that of numbers. A fashion was born. We jostle to get to the top, enjoy a cocktail and contemplate

From afar the infinite smallness of the cities where we live. The competition is on to create the most Instagrammable rooftop, the one that will be found on the glossy pages of luxury magazines. They have become the places where we go to forget “life below”.

When the sun sets on this city whose real name is “the city of angels”, we start to dream that the experts are wrong, that it will not be swallowed up by climate change, and that it will last eternally. Because life there is sweet, and the night is enchanting.

Le fleuve Chao Phraya a façonné l’histoire, la topographie et les moeurs de Bangkok.
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En le suivant, on découvre le récit et l’âme de cette ville née des eaux. Ce film révèle la genèse et les secrets de la capitale Thaï à travers les monuments religieux et civils bâtis sur les berges du fleuve ; le Mont d’Or, qui servit de charnier à la suite des grandes épidémies, ou encore ses quartiers tels Chinatown ou Little India. Un moment de découverte au fil d’un fleuve, souvent inattendu, qui serpente au coeur d’une des villes les plus fascinantes du monde

Bangkok, une ville née des eaux
Un film de Clermont Fu
©Ampersand