A brief overview of my research in Thailand, followed by excerpts. My book, now approaching publication, is an ethnographic study of the Chao Phraya River titled Waterways of Bangkok: Memory, Landscape, and Twilight. Written at a time of intense political turmoil, as the long-reigning king was dying, this book describes the cultural life of the waterways and offers alternate perspectives on the Thai past, present, and future.
EXHIBIT #1: Water Mother
The Chao Phraya River, which flows south through Bangkok, is a maternal being. The Thai word for river means “water mother.” This expression likely reflects Siam’s animist, pre-Buddhist traditions, in which women dominated public ceremonies. Rivers in Thailand have long been regarded as a source of life. Today, however, the Chao Phraya is polluted with trash and industrial waste, including plastic, foam, and chemicals. In November, on the day of Loi Kratong, Thais gather along the banks to make offerings and apologize to the water mother.
EXHIBIT #2: Infrastructure
Bangkok was once known as the Venice of the East. Rivers and canals formed the primary infrastructure of transportation. Today, many canals have been filled and paved, converted into roads, and the automobile traffic is notorious, but there would be no Bangkok without the waterways. In fact, this aquatic past is inscribed into the city’s name: a bang is a riverside village.
EXHIBIT #3: River of Kings
The name Chao Phraya alludes to the archaic field-power system, in which Siamese society was divided into four classes: slaves, commoners, nobility, and royalty. Chao Phraya was a high noble rank. A man of this rank would control up to 10,000 rai, or about 4,000 acres, and would have thousands of people at his command. At the top of the field-power system was the king, known as the “lord of life,” and all land was property of the crown. Today, royal images, such as statues and billboards, are abundant along the riverbanks. In spite of the revolution of 1932, royal power remains widely inscribed in the Thai landscape.
EXHIBIT #4: Territory
The river was given the name Chao Phraya in the late 19th century, during the reign of Rama V. Previously each section of the river had its own name, known to the local community. As Siam’s neighbors fell under direct colonial rule, and as France and Britain squeezed Siam, the Siamese monarchs attempted to imitate the colonial powers. It became necessary to demarcate and define Siamese territory, its boundaries and internal features. In short, to make maps. Rivers, as well as mountain ranges, were apprehended from a bird’s-eye view and given names.
EXCERPT: Royal Barges
From Waterways of Bangkok:
We hear the procession before we see it. The barges approach from upstream. A slow, repetitive melody emits from a speaker. It is a male voice, soft but powerful. Based in an ancient vocal tradition, the voice amplifies the procession’s ceremonial aura—profound, dignified, almost supernatural. Crowds move closer to the banks. Conversation quiets. Boats begin to appear. The royal barges, with their dramatic gold-painted prows, are escorted by long black canoes. The rowers are soldiers, and the crews are outfitted in one of three colors: brown, pink, or blue. The rhythmic rise and fall of oars shows military discipline. The vessels have different rowing patterns: 1-1-1, 3-3-3, 1-1-3. These cycles, with the oars striking the water, set a textural contrast to the melody. We stand at the edge of the river now, by the rail. Observers take pictures with cellphone cameras. Clouds and sunlight alternate. Fon gives me a cloth to wrap my head. “Can you figure it out?” she asks. Like others, she is waiting for the swan-headed barge, which in full-scale processions carries the king. An orderly series of vessels, black and gold, now fill this expanse of the Chao Phraya. The melody repeats over and over, pausing between cycles. The rhythmic clacking of oars proceeds. Near the center of each vessel are the pole-bearers. In intervals, the men lift the poles, pause briefly, then strike the planks. The resonant impact signals the beginning of a new rowing cycle. Horns emerge and retreat. People on the banks speak little. The melange—voice, poles, oars, horns—is punctuated with brief moments of semi-silence.
EXCERPT: Ghosts
From Waterways of Bangkok:
The rice mill was demolished, the ghosts evicted. This is part of the story of continuity, change, and loss in the landscape. Ghosts lurk along the waterways. The maternal river evokes a time when women were exalted for their ability to communicate with spirits. Across Southeast Asia, spirits controlled rain, lightning, earthquakes, and floods. Buddhism, by contrast, elevated men, but animism was never vanquished. Even today, some spirits will only enter the bodies of women. Many informants, natives of the city as well as migrants from up-country, said that ghosts have an even stronger presence in rural Thailand. A woman from a village in the east, near Cambodia, said you can see them at night, dots of light flickering over the fields. Those are pii krasue (ผีกระสือ), a kind of female ghost known since ancient times. At close range she appears as a floating, decapitated human head, with long hair and guts dangling. She eats infants, filth, frogs, and snakes. A man in Bangkok explained that the presence of ghosts varies with time and place. Some are region-specific; some are specific to certain eras. “Ghosts have to exist,” he said. “With people come ghosts. But in some places, you know for sure, there are no ghosts—like Central World [a large shopping complex]. Ghosts stay in old places, places where people have lived and died.” One might think of the ghosts that occupy Malaysian factories: modern organizations of space, with machines, regulations, and fluorescent lights. In Bangkok, however, ghosts are evicted from the nodes of progress.
Places for ghosts are still found along the river. One evening a woman pointed to an abandoned, dilapidated, crumbling house, where she had seen a ghost. She often passed this house, and the ghost had appeared many times and tried to frighten her. Belief in ghosts is ubiquitous in Bangkok. All too often, late at night, a horrific chorus of howling dogs, a sign of unwholesome presence, could be heard in my alley. After a few months in Bangkok, I had nightmares about ghosts, so a friend gave me an amulet to keep in my room. Others said ghosts do not intend to frighten us; ghosts want us to make merit for them, so they will be released from wandering between worlds. Some women adopt the wandering ghosts of children. Though invisible, the ghosts follow their adoptive mothers. One day an informant was watching a TV show about a boy haunted by the ghost of his dead girlfriend, who had a terrible wound across her forehead from a fatal car accident. Bangkok is a city of spirit houses and shrines, where people make offerings to place-bound spirits. Mother Nak is honored and feared along the Canal of Phra Khanong. In the 19th century, she died in childbirth. Her husband was away, having been conscripted by the military. He returned home, not knowing she was dead, then ran away from her ghost. Forlorn and vengeful, she roamed the canal, terrorizing villagers, until a sorcerer [หมอผี] trapped her spirit in a jar and dropped it into the canal. Later, a fisherman unknowingly caught the jar in his net and released her spirit. Again she roamed the waterways. Her corpse was exhumed and a piece of bone cut from the skull. A monk made a belt buckle from the bone fragment, thereby restraining her spirit. But her story is remembered and her power persists. Mother Nak despises the military, and thus young men make offerings to avoid conscription.
Anderson describes a shift in recent decades, the re-centering of Bangkok: “As late as 1960, Bangkok could still be described as the ‘Venice of the East,’ a somnolent old-style royal harbour-city dominated by canals, temples, and palaces. Fifteen years later, many of the canals had been filled in to form roads and many of the temples had fallen into decay. The whole center of gravity of the capital had moved eastwards, away from the royal compounds and Chinese ghettos by the Chao Phraya river to a new cosmopolitan zone dominated visually and politically by vast office buildings, banks, hotels, and shopping plazas.” The old aquatic artery ties together many old places. Ghosts proliferate there, in part because of accidents and suicides. Spirits, people say, sometimes drag victims into the depths. A man who worked part-time with a rescue unit said he sometimes removes corpses from the river. “The smell is terrible,” he said. “But I’m used to it. Most people can’t do this work. It’s not just the smell—they’re terrified of ghosts. But when I handle the bodies, I’m always respectful. I never step over a corpse. I’ve been doing this for more than ten years, and not even once has a ghost come to haunt me.”
A woman walked out of the next hovel. She had been listening to our conversation. “Do you want to go searching for corpses in the river with uncle?” she asked. “Are you scared?”
