THE MENAM
MRS. UNSWORTH
The River Menam (mother of waters) is the central attraction of all life and trade; it is the great highway for traffic and the great cleanser and purifier of the cities; its tide sweeps out to the sea all the dirt and refuse accumulating therein; it is the universal bath for all the Siamese. The children paddle and play their games in it; it is the scene of their frolics in infancy, their means of livelihood in manhood, and to many of them their grave in death. At sunset, when work is suspended, there is a great splashing and plunging going on all along the river banks, everybody taking a bath or amusing themselves in the water. The river bar is a great trouble to navigators. The king will not have it dredged, as he, in his ignorance, thinks it a natural protection to his country, as only ships of a shallow draft can cross. Trading ships have to be built specially constructed for that purpose. No large man-of-war can cross, but the king did not take into consideration the small torpedo boats that can do so much mischief; recent events, however, must have opened his eyes. We cannot rush into Siam at railway speed; the ship must be lightened as much as possible, and we must wait until the tide is at its highest--it may be two hours, or it may be twenty-two--and even then the channel is so narrow that if we go a little to the right or to the left we run aground. Many times there are two ships fast aground; once or twice there have been four and five. Some have had to stay seven and eight days, and have every movable thing taken out before they could rise. Nothing can exceed the monotony of lying aground there; there is nothing to see, only in the distance some low-lying ground covered with a scrub, no sign of habitations, no cliffs or green hills rising out of the sea--nothing but water, water all around, and a glimpse of flat low-lying ground with wild shrubs on it.
After crossing this vexatious river bar, we proceed up the river eight miles with nothing to see but low banks until we come to the forts at Paknam. The river banks are very low, and fringed at the water’s edge with palms and huge tree ferns; the mango and tamarind trees hang over and the banyan tree, with its branches hanging down and taking root again, makes quite an entanglement of roots and branches. At night these trees are lit up with thousands of fire flies; on a dark night they glisten and sparkle like the firmament. But in the morning the river is alive with buyers and sellers. We very soon come to a market lying in the river--all kinds of Eastern fruits and vegetables and crockeryware are piled up on floating rafts, the sellers sitting cross-legged beside their wares, and the buyers rushing about in small canoes propelled with one oar.
If the officers in charge of steamships like to be mischievous and go full speed, leaving a big swell in their track, they have the fun of seeing the floating stalls swaying up and down, banging against one another fruit and vegetables, rolling off into the water, with the stall-holders shouting and plunging into the river to save their wares!
[Illustration: THE MENAM]
We then come to more floating houses and houses on piles. Europeans find the advantage of living on the river to be that they get more breeze and fewer mosquitoes; so here and there, among the floating mat-shed erections, we see a neat painted wooden house on piles; it has to be approached by a boat, and you enter up a staircase on to a wide verandah. The sitting-rooms and bedrooms all open out of this verandah. No windows, no fireplaces are needed in this country--very strange un-home-like residences they are to any one coming fresh from England, yet they are suitable for the climate.
Here and there amongst the palm trees, and under wide-spreading tamarind trees we see white-washed temples, with fantastically-shaped gilded roofs; they look very picturesque amongst the trees; they have a style of architecture peculiar to the country, which is more prominent in the shape of the roof, which is a sloping Gothic roof, with all the corners branching out and turning up; one roof is surmounted with another smaller, and then a smaller one still. These buildings give quite a character to the country and are very numerous. It makes Siamese architecture quite distinctive from that of other countries.
As we get to the city of Bangkok, the sides of the river are lined with timber and saw-mills and rice-mills, with tall chimneys, and black smoke oozing out. This is European enterprise; they quite spoil the scenic effect on the river, but not any more than the mean, dirty bamboo huts that line the riversides. The Siamese have no medium respectability; it is all either gorgeously gilded palaces, and fantastically-adorned temples, or filthy-looking huts. A great many of the shopkeepers have their shops right on the river. Some of them are neatly arranged, with a platform in front, on which you land from your boat. All the family are lounging about this platform, the wife carrying on her domestic duties, washing up the cooking utensils by dipping them into the river; the clothes (what few they wear) go through the same process; and the children, naked, are sporting about this narrow platform, or sitting on the edge with their feet in the water.
It is very convenient for a shopkeeper who wishes to change his place of business; if he thinks there is a more desirable and more frequented spot, he just unmoors his floating shop and has it towed to the place he wants, without disarranging his wares.
Branching off from the river are innumerable canals, or creeks--the Siamese call them klongs--the banks of which are lined with houses and shops; they make a canal where we would make a road or a street. Up some of these klongs there are pretty views, especially at sunset. Graceful ferns and palms, bamboo trees, with their branches dipping into the water and reflected therein, and between the branches the sloping roof of some house or temple is visible. But many of these klongs or canals, in the most frequented part of the city, are the reverse of pretty. They are just like a large open sewer running down to the river, full of filthy garbage. When the tide is low there are the black slime, the naked children playing in it, and the dirty huts on rickety piles leaning forward as if they wanted to slide down into the mud; sometimes a dead body comes floating down, and plenty of dead animals.
It is very lively on the river in the city. Here are ocean-going steamers and sailing vessels moored amid-stream, or tied up to the various wharves, whilst an endless variety of native craft are darting about--narrow boats, like canoes, propelled with one oarsman, hawking fruit and betel; pretty little house boats, fashioned something like the Venetian gondolas, with four, six or more rowers, standing up, dressed in bright uniforms, according to the rank of the family they belong to; the rice boats from far up the country, of very peculiar construction, flat-bottomed, to go through shallow water, and wide bulging out sides, roofed over like houses. In the rainy season, when the river is full, the large teak-wood rafts about 1,000 feet long, come floating down, with huts for the steersman built on them. Small steam launches and ferries, running up and down from various places, all combine to make the river scene pretty and interesting. One enthusiastic newspaper correspondent pronounced Bangkok to be the Venice of the East. It may resemble Venice in the amount of water traffic, but it would require a great stretch of imagination, and the help of some glorifying and transfiguring tints from the setting sun, before we could allow the comparison; but no doubt it bears the same relation to the East, where filth and squalor predominate, as Venice bears to the refined and cultured Europe.
There are a few well-kept houses of business and private residences bordering the river, but not many, and these in no way resemble the marble palaces of European Venice. The general aspect of the river banks is dirty disorder--rotten piles, with untidy-looking floating houses, mat-sheds, and bamboo huts, reaching up to the King’s palace. The palace walls enclose many buildings, offices, temples, private residences, gardens, and residences for the sacred white elephants. The attractive part of these buildings and the great ornamentation are in the roofs, which are very gorgeous. Some have tall pointed pinnacles, all gilded; some are covered with a fantastic pattern in porcelain, with little gilded peaks, which look dazzling in the sun. Viewed from a distance these buildings realize all that has been written in glowing terms of Eastern palaces, but near to the charm is not so vivid, as there is much tawdriness about them. Whilst remaining on the river the filth and refuse are not so prominent; the tide sweeps all away. But leave the river, and take to the woods. Oh! the offensive sights and smells that greet one’s eyes and nose--offal and waste of every description thrown in front of the houses in the public streets. But nature is kind and very luxurious here; in a short time these heaps of rubbish are covered with a growth of grass and creeping plants. The principal shops are like those on the river--one large room open to the street, no doors or windows, the family living there, and the domestic arrangements mixed up with the business of selling.