Wednesday Walk: walking along Wireless Road, Bangkok.

Wireless road was one of the oldest road in Bangkok where old big trees (older than a hundred years ago) could still be seen. During years, several trees had died so they had to be replaced. During a windy storm years ago, big branches broke off and fell on top of passing cars. So, the local authority had begun to take care of these trees.

But the workers were mostly poorly educated and had no training on how to trim branches and keep the trees in good shape. So, one year these eager workers managed to blotch the beauty of this road by chopping branches which seemed to be spreading too much. The result caused an uproar among well off residents and frequent travelers along this road. The chief of the metropolitan authority were in bad troubles as influential people join in the failure of the local authority. It was like opening a can of worms concerning the neglect and incompetence of the high level managers.

People would be surprised that most people didn’t have basic knowledge about trees and how importance they were to our well being. Even local villagers relied on their limited experience and had not been trained by local officers on how to use new techniques to improve the soil and their crops. Several well educated people who were knowledgeable about the correct ways to prune big trees had offered to give lectures to the workers. From then on, the local authority had to have experts in garden design to supervise the cutting of branches of tgese old trees.

Over eighty years ago, there were canals along both sides of the road. All the houses front porches would be facing the canals with rowing boats lining along the small private piers. Rowing around in small boats was the common transportation in Bangkok over a hundred years ago. Only the very high ranking people with lots of wealth could afford to keep elephants and horses for personal transportation. The rich people would have big steamed boats or long boats with rowers. King Rama V used to visit the countryside in disgiuse as a merchant. He had a medium size rowing boat and seceral small long boats with the entourage.

After constructing the first few roads in Bangkok, things took an unstoppable momentum towards the death of old ways of transportation. New road and Wireless road were among the first roads built in Bangkok as these locations were densely populated by foreigner diplomats and businesses. The demise of canals started in tandem with horse draw carriages, steamboats and electric cars. Nowadays, the super rich have private plabes, jets and helicopters. In the future, they would have driverless cars and personal drones for short trips to exclusive restaurants.

The price of land in Wireless road is the most expensive in Bangkok. So, if you have an address in this road, it meant you belong to the exclusive club of the wealthy class. But the traffic jam along this road is so atrocious that I would take a bus instead of driving my car to my favourite coffee shop around here. I liked to walk along some parts of this road just to observe changes over the years. I used to drive down this road during the plandemic years when the road was quite empty of traffic. The atmosphere was quite strange and forlorn in those days as if some aliens had sucked up all the cars. It was nice to drive slowly while looking at all those big trees.

Things have shifted back to more lively pace with more tourists in this area and traffic jams have returned. But the prices of coffee and cakes in my favourite ciffee shop have soared by 20% at least. This place also has a restaurant offering customers with menus according to blood types. There’s also a wide choice of vegetarian and vegan foods. All the vegetables are organically grown in the garden of the owners in their resort on mountainous areas two hours’ drive away from Bangkok. So, when I became exhausted from my short walk, I could drop into my favourite coffee shop for apple pie and cappuccino!

Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.

(This post was started 4 days ago, but pressing gardening work had kept me busy.)

Stay strong and cheerful.

#wednesdaywalk hosted by @tattoodjay