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Preface

Bangkok is not an easy city to understand. Visitors are perplexed by what appears to be an endless sprawl, and information is not easily available. Tour groups will be taken to the main sights, where they will be dazzled by the splendour but have little context in which to understand what they are looking at. Independent travellers will seek out sights and find the friendly little brown notice boards installed by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to be a big help, but again there is little available to guide them there in the first place, and to provide the background information that those with a serious interest in exploring this fascinating city will need.

22 Walks in Bangkok is designed as both a history of the city and as an exploration guide. The idea grew out of a series of columns I wrote for a local magazine some years ago, in which I took a number of localities and attempted to explain what they were and how they got there. When I first set out on the series, I wondered why it hadn’t been tried before. I soon found out. The information is widely scattered, and there was little in the way of informative guidebooks for a journalist with limited time and a looming deadline. The series was successful and ran for three years, but I was never entirely happy with the content, feeling it could have been much better.

I had been intending for a long time to return to the concept and create a full-length book, but the scale of the task was formidable. Simply rewriting the columns was not possible, as the book needed to be packed full of detail, and to have a narration that actually walked the reader into, and around, the historic districts. For a long time I kept the idea in my mind, where it sat as a continually nagging presence. Eventually, with the encouragement (and immense patience) of publisher Eric Oey, I started, and finished. The book has involved an enormous amount of research, a lot of help from a lot of kind people, and an extraordinary amount of shoe leather. For me, it has been worth every minute. Before I started, I thought I knew Bangkok well. I now know it a whole lot better.

My hope is that anyone with an interest in getting below the surface of Bangkok, and in discovering its old districts, temples and palaces, and its various nooks and corners, will use this book as a guide and find the same satisfaction in exploring the city that I have.