by Ben McCarthy
It's hard to miss the curl of the Chao Phraya river as your plane descends into Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport. The Chao Phraya cuts through the city, winding past the historic districts of Dusit and Bangrak and dividing Bangkok proper from the neighboring province of Samut Prakan.
Unlike many modern cities, water is a central part of Bangkok's identity, and the Chao Phraya, above all of the other canals and waterways, is its lifeblood. For much of Bangkok’s relatively young history, the city was known as the Venice of the East precisely because of the network of canals and waterways that snake off of the Chao Phraya river. Today many of them have been filled in or paved over in order to facilitate new construction projects. But the Chao Phraya remains a symbol of Bangkok's past.
The post The Changing Face of Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River appeared first on Nyack News and Views.