During my visit to Bangkok in September 2015, the Chao Phraya River became much more than a way of getting from one place to another. I travelled on it frequently, sometimes simply to look at the life unfolding along its banks and to photograph the houses, boats and people who belonged to that landscape. From the water, the city revealed a different face.
The Chao Phraya has shaped settlement, trade and travel in central Thailand for centuries. Its waterways and connected canals made it possible to move people and goods through the low-lying plain, while also supporting communities that lived close to the river. In Bangkok, passenger boats and ferries still provide an everyday alternative to the crowded streets. I found that they also offered a constantly changing vantage point for photography.
What interested me most was the contrast between old and new. Modest wooden houses stood beside the river, sometimes directly above the water, while modern towers rose behind them. Farther north, mosques reminded me of the Muslim communities living along this waterway. From passing boats I also photographed temples, including views of Wat Pho. The river seemed to connect neighbourhoods that might otherwise appear entirely separate.
One of these journeys took my wife and me to Ko Kret, a small island in the Chao Phraya north of Bangkok. The island was formed when a shortcut canal was dug in the eighteenth century, cutting across a bend in the river. We first travelled to Nonthaburi and then crossed to the island by motorboat. I remember the fare as just two baht, and the crossing was very short.
Ko Kret offered a quieter rhythm than central Bangkok. We followed a path around the island, observing houses raised on wooden posts above the flood-prone ground. These buildings reflected a practical relationship with the river: water was not merely scenery, but a condition of daily life that people had learned to accommodate. I photographed the houses and the spaces between them, interested in how architecture could express such an adaptation.
At one temple I noticed sculptures of roosters near the entrance. I had not encountered such figures at a Buddhist temple before, and they caught my attention. The rooster has different associations in local and religious traditions, but I could not establish what these particular sculptures represented. For me, they became another detail worth recording rather than a symbol I could confidently interpret.
On our way back, I came upon a local photographer making a family portrait in a very simple studio. I asked his permission to photograph the scene, and he agreed. As a photographer myself, I felt an immediate connection with that ordinary moment: another person arranging people in front of a camera, preserving a family memory. It was one of the encounters I remember most clearly from the day.
These photographs are not intended as a complete portrait of the Chao Phraya or Ko Kret. They are fragments of what I saw while moving along the river: wooden houses against skyscrapers, places of worship, boats, an island shaped by a canal and a photographer at work. Together, they recall the pleasure of discovering a city from its water and of finding small human stories along the way.