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was a good food supply during times of war since it can be kept for a long time and becomes soft and edible once sprinkled with water. King Taksin kept his troops supplied with khao mao as regular army rations. Ban Khao Mao supplied the households of royalty and nobility with traditional Siamese desserts and other delicacies during the Thonburi period and throughout the nineteenth century. A few families here still make and sell khao mao, and there is a small museum nearby, in the grounds of Wat Sutthawat, that tells of this and other traditional skills that once flourished in the area.

      Many of the refugees who managed to get out of Ayutthaya when the Burmese destroyed the city were skilled craftsmen who travelled down the river to Thonburi, where they once again flourished, briefly under Taksin and then to a greater degree under the Chakri dynasty, as Bangkok was founded. One little band of travellers set up a community in Thonburi on the bank of the Bangkok Noi canal. They called their village Ban Bu, after the trade they had brought with them. The word bu doesn’t translate directly, but it means to hammer gently and rhythmically, as a smithy does when he is forming something delicate like a plate or cup. These people were bronze smiths, making the ornamental bronze bowls and goblets for the temples and palaces of Ayutthaya.

      Ancient timber houses straggle along the bank of the Bangkok Noi canal beside Wat Suwannaram, and there is a century-old market hall, Wat Thong Talat, with a handsome truss-beam roof. Ban Bu main street is nothing more than a pathway a few feet wide, just broad enough to take the motorcycles that buzz down here, past the temple and over the humped bridge that crosses a small inlet from the canal. There is a pleasantly timeless feel, but time has changed the village of the bronzesmiths, for the number of manufacturers has dwindled to just one, a family-owned firm named Jiam Sangsajja. They are now the only craftsmen in Bangkok producing the traditional stonewashed bronze bowls known as khan long hin. There used to be a tiny shop on the main street but it burned down a few years ago, set alight when a gas canister in the neighbouring house exploded in the early hours of the morning, says Metta Salanon, matriarch of the business. A gazebo has replaced the shop, and the small timber house that stood behind it now serves as Metta’s office and showroom. Metta is a tiny, compact woman with glossy hair and a cherubic smile. The fire had done the image of the business no good, and what was a dying trade now has only a few years left. The two remaining smiths are now about sixty years old. When they retire, there will be no one else to replace them, as nobody is interested in learning this craft.

      The workshop is a ramshackle mix of corrugated zinc and timber, lit mainly by daylight from the open doorway. The heat hits you straight away, and the smell of burning coals and red hot metal hangs heavily in the air. There is a startling plop and hiss as someone tosses something hot into a tub of cold water. Two open furnaces protected by structures like zinc sentry boxes throw out a cherry-red glow. Here sit the two smithies, each with a helper, practicing their ancient art. A smithy places slivers of copper, tin and a gold known as thong mah lau into an earthen mould and heats it for about ten minutes over the charcoal. The contents melt and blend into liquid bronze, which is poured into a mould called a din ngann. The bronze forms a pancake shape. The smithy bakes the flat metal until it turns hard like stone, washing it in water to make it harder. He and his helper then alternately beat the metal into its finished form, the final stage being known as karn laai, in which a much smaller hammer is used for final shaping. A middle-aged lady carries this out, and the remainder of the tiny workforce is also female, three women carrying out the cleaning and polishing stages. In earlier days the craftsmen would polish their work with fine stones wrapped in a piece of cloth, hence the name “stone washed”. Nowadays they grind the mould into powder and use that instead, a method that gives a depth and lustre unmatched by the metal polish used by modern factories. The bronze glows in the light that filters through the doorway, and if you ping a large bowl with your finger, it gives out the resonant sound of a temple bell.

      Ban Bu is tucked in directly behind Wat Suwannaram, a temple whose beauty is at distinct odds with its grim history. King Taksin had used the grounds of this Ayutthaya-era temple as a place to execute a large number of Burmese prisoners of war, who were brought down from a holding camp at Bang Kaew in Phitsanulok Province to meet their fate. Quite why Taksin chose the temple for this purpose is unknown. There is, however, nothing to mark the temple’s former notoriety. The original building no longer stands, having been demolished by Rama I, who then had the present structure erected. Off to the side of the temple a royal crematorium was built (it was Siam’s first funeral facility built of concrete) and used until the reign of Rama V, when it was demolished. Bangkok Noi District Office occupies the site today.

      Enter the temple ubosot and there is the most exquisitely painted interior, with frescoes on all four walls painted by Master Thongyu and Master Kongpae, two of the leading artists of Rama III’s reign. They had worked side by side here, and Suwannaram is one of the greatest surviving examples of first period Rattanakosin mural painting. This style followed the traditions of Ayutthaya, being essentially light and airy and with a two-dimensional form that pre-dated the Siamese use of perspective and which lends a zigzag appearance to the scenes and episodes depicted. There is, however, a curious perspective that gives the impression the viewer is looking down from above, into the scenes, and below the stylised representations of celestial and noble beings can be seen the antics of the common folk. Often comical, and always very human, they are a record of everyday life of that time. Here there is added interest for the visitor with scenes depicting European characters, including a man in late-seventeenth century dress peering over battlements with a telescope and another taking a pop with a rifle, possibly representing the siege of Bangkok. Another scene shows foreign troops clad in turbans, and judging by the style of dress and their facial characteristics these are believed to be Persians, there having been an influential group of Persian merchants at Ayutthaya. The golden image of the Buddha is in the Subduing Mara position. A curious tradition is attached to this image, which is believed to have the power of fulfilling wishes for those who perform a forfeit. The forfeit is known as wing ma, which means “horse riding”, and the petitioner must run around the ubosot three times, straddling a banana tree “horse” and neighing loudly as he goes. An obliging local once demonstrated this for me. It is highly recommended that anyone performing wing ma has a group of understanding friends present.

      A little further along the bank of Klong Bangkok Noi leads to the railway line. Opened in 1903, it was first built to link to Petchaburi on the west coast of the Gulf of Siam, and then down to Butterworth, in Malaya. A spur was later added to Kanchanaburi, in the west, near the Burma border. The trains had left from Thonburi Station, which was designed by the German architect Karl Döhring and built at the mouth of the Bangkok Noi canal, but as there were no bridges across the Chao Phraya at that time, passengers departing from the Bangkok side had first to take a boat across to the railway station. Rama V had ordered the building of Thonburi Station, filling in part of Taksin’s moat and moving a Muslim community that lived here, donating land on the opposite bank of the canal for them. An Ayutthaya-era Buddhist temple, Wat Amarintharam, stands on the edge of the station land and lost three of its four assembly halls, consequently becoming known by the locals as bot noi, or small chapel.

      A Japanese locomotive outside Thonburi Station, originally the southern rail terminus.

      Following the restructuring of the railway administration system, the decision was taken to build a bridge further upriver, at Bang Sue, and this, the Rama VI Bridge, opened in 1927. It was the first bridge across the Chao Phraya. Trains for the south now departed from Hua Lampong Station, and Thonburi was left to service only the western line. When the Japanese forces occupied Siam in 1941, they used the station as their base for what became known as the Death Railway, the railway line they laid up to Three Pagodas Pass and through to Burma. The Allied forces bombed and destroyed Thonburi Station but after the war it was rebuilt in the same style, a European design in pale red brick with cream detailing and pale blue window shutters, the oblong structure topped with a square clocktower. There were, however, few trains: the line is used by commuters living in the Thonburi suburbs and the neighbouring province of Nakhon Pathom, and by tourists travelling to the Bridge on the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi, but its old status as an important terminus had ended. The station was decommissioned late in 2003, and Bangkok Noi Station, 800 metres down the line, became the terminus and was renamed

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