Siam: Its Government, Manners, Customs, &c.

by N. A. McDonald

Bangkok, the capital of the kingdom, is situated on both sides of the Menam Chow Phya, about twenty-five miles from its mouth. It contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, and has been called the Venice of the East, from the fact that much of the city is floating on the river in the form of floating houses. These floating houses are a kind of nondescript affair, and it is impossible to give one who has never seen them any idea of them. The following description, by the oldest missionary in Siam, and published in the Bangkok Calendar of 1866, though quite too elaborate for easy reading, is as good as anything that can be given, and I shall insert it "in toto."

"Our friends in the western world have heard a good deal about the floating houses of Bangkok, but they universally speak of being unable to understand, after all that has been written, what kind of things they are. If the descriptions that have been given of them could have always been accompanied by good photographic pictures of the same, our friends would have had much less difficulty in understanding them. But such pictures are too expensive to procure for illustrating 'The Bangkok Calendar,' which never pays for its cost, and hence we must do the next best thing, and that is to descend into quite minute detail, if we would make our friends who have never visited Bangkok understand such unique structures as the floating houses of the city. And as these houses form a large part of the dwellings and mercantile shops of this great metropolis, being the most conspicuous of all buildings (the temples only excepted) as you pass up and down the Menam Chow Phya, the 'Broadway' of Bangkok, they seem to demand a minute description in 'The Calendar.' These floating houses are moored on both sides of the river for a distance of nearly three miles. Their size, on an average, is about forty by thirty feet on the base; in height, eight feet to the eves, and fifteen feet to the ridge of the roof. As this base could not be covered by a roof of only two sides, and make it sufficiently steep to shed rain well, without being too high for safety on the river in time of a squall, the natives divide the area to be covered into two nearly equal parts, and put a two-sided roof over each division, thatched with the attap palm leaf, (cocos nipa.) The two eves that thus meet in the middle of the house have an eve-trough common to both of them, which is always seen in the house about eight feet from the floor, passing uniformly in the direction of the river. Hence nearly all these floating houses appear to be double, standing sidewise to the river, the ridge of the front being a little lower than the one behind it. There is always a narrow verandah four or five feet wide attached to the front division, which is covered with an extra roof of attap leaves, extending from under the main point roof, with a more gentle slope than the front roof, and then, in front of these, there is usually a small bamboo float from three to five feet wide. This is sometimes extended the whole length of the house, and sometimes only from three to ten feet. The eve of the verandah is not more than six feet above the floor. From this there is often suspended a bamboo mat, or some other material more tasty, for a screen from the glare of the river. The ends of the two double roofs are all furnished precisely alike with a peculiar kind of moulding made of a thin plank tastefully curved at the bottom, like the written capital A, and put up edgewise at the extreme end, to constitute a neat finish for the thatching. The triangular area made by each double roof at the ends is generally closed with attap thatching; sometimes with bamboo matting, sometimes with wooden pannelled work, sometimes with a regular clap-boarding, and rarely with woodwork radiating from the lower side of the triangle upwards.

"These floating houses are always divided into two main rooms—the front and inner one. The floor of the latter is about one foot higher than the front. There are narrow passages five feet wide at the right and left of these rooms, which are simply enclosed verandahs, with each an attap roof, leading to a narrow room of the same width and kind in the extreme rear. The front room is used for the purpose of a variety-store, and the inner one for a bed-room.

"In it you will generally find the family idol-altar, if the occupant be a Chinese. It is often used for putting away lots of goods, a few samples of which are daily exposed for sale in the front room. These exhibitions are made on a kind of amphitheatre-formed shelving facing the river, so that every article can be seen at a glance by passers-by in boats. The whole front is exposed to view in the daytime, not by opening all the doors and windows, but by taking down much of the front siding, which consists of boards varying from ten to twelve inches in width, standing up endwise, and fitted into grooves above and below. These boards are slid out early every morning, one by one, and laid away out of sight under the floor, in a place reserved for them during the day. Early in the evening each board is put in its place for closing up the front of the shop, leaving not the least door or window by which one may have direct access to it. But there is a small door in front of each of the narrow passages in the extreme rear.

"This narrow room is commonly used for the purposes of a cook-room. The fire place is simply a shallow wooden box filled with clay. There is no chimney or stovepipe attached to any of them. In the place of one they make a scuttle hole in the thatched roof only six feet above, and this has a trap door made of the same material as the roof, which can be closed in rainy weather. Even in the best weather only a part of the smoke escapes through the opening, while the remainder finds its way out in all quarters. Consequently this little cook-room is always a very smoky place, and is blackened with soot to a greater or less extent, as are also many other parts of the establishment.

"Some better-to-do occupants of these floating houses have a small bamboo caboose, moored at one end of the dwelling house. The floating houses are usually enclosed with teak boards standing up endwise, and permanently fixed into grooves above and below. Sometimes the siding is made of bamboo wattling.

"It remains to be shown the mode of buoying up the floating houses above the water, which being quite unique, deserves a particular description. In the sills of the house are framed five rows of scantling, four-by-six inches or larger, which descend into the water five or six feet. These are so arranged that they divide the whole area underneath the sills into four equal parts, or, as the Siamese say, hawngs, or sections, for filling with bamboo poles. The first object of these five rows of legs, bounding as they do the four equal divisions, is to prevent the bamboo poles from rolling out sideways under the pressure of the superincumbent house; and the other is to render it quite convenient to exchange every year old and rotten bamboos for new ones. Now a new set of bamboos will serve well the purposes of a buoy only about two years; and to save the trouble of exchanging all under the house at once, the natives manage to exchange only half of them annually, so that the house is not for a moment left without enough to keep it well out of the water. This is done by removing all the bamboos from one or two of the divisions which have been in use two years, and filling their places with new ones. The divisions which have bamboos of one year's service remain undisturbed until next year; when their time has expired, they too are cast out to give place to others. Thus there are always left two divisions of the last year's bamboos to serve in conjunction with two divisions of new ones. The annual cost of new bamboos for a floating house of medium size is not far from forty Ticals, and the number of bamboo poles required is from five to eight hundred.

"As these floating houses are generally moored close together, standing end to end, in an even line in the direction of the river, it becomes necessary that the house which is to be replenished with bamboos should be moved out a little in front of its neighbor's, thus making room for sliding out the old bamboos from either end, and sliding in new ones to fill their places. There are men who follow this business as their profession, and do it very dextrously. One day is quite sufficient to accomplish the whole work for any house. The bamboos, it scarcely need be said, are slender poles, from three to four inches in diameter at the butt-end, and not more than half that size at the top. They are from twenty-five to thirty feet in length. The top ends of the poles are always the ones that are pushed under the house, and consequently are hidden, while the butt-ends are always external, forming an even surface at each end of the house. The poles being about three-fourths the length of the house, the smaller extremities consequently overlap each other from eight to ten feet, and make an equal thickness of buoying material beneath the middle of the house, with that of each end.

"A house newly buoyed up looks quite tidy and dry, its floors being from three to four feet above water. The houses are kept in their places, forming a regular line with their fellows, thirty feet or more from shore, by means of three or four teak posts or piles, driven at each end into the soft bottom of the river six or eight feet; and these are made mutual supporters of each other by lashing a bamboo pole across them all near their tops. The house is then fastened to these posts by means of bands or hoops encircling very loosely each post, so that they shall readily slip up and down as the tide raises the house or causes it to settle down. For this purpose it is indispensable that there be no notches or knots on the posts that shall cause the hoops to catch on them. Such a notch would cause the post to be drawn up out of its place in a flowing tide, and would sink it deeper in an ebbing one. While sitting in these houses you will often hear a crack, and consequent sudden sinking of the house, caused by the sliding of a hoop out of the place where it had been caught on the posts. Where the water is unusually deep where a floating house is moored, and the bottom of the river unstable, you will see the tops of the mooring posts made fast by a cable to something firm on shore. Sometimes the whole gives way notwithstanding, and then the house is adrift at the mercy of the tide. The writer was once in a floating house that had got adrift in the night time, and floated down the river many miles before it could be made to submit to the power of the ropes and cables, with which we endeavoured many times in vain to stop her downward way. She would snap our stoutest ropes, as Samson did all the instruments with which his enemies bound him. These floating houses are often moved from place to place, and it is no uncommon thing to see one floating up or down the river with the family in, and everything going on as regularly within as if it was snugly moored."

The buildings on shore belonging to the chief princes and nobles, are built of rough brick and stuccoed inside and out. The style of architecture is a kind of Siamo-Chinese. The next best kind of house consists of posts sunk into the ground, which constitute the frame work, whilst the sides are made of boards wrought into a kind of pannel work. This is called a "ruen fa kadan," or weatherboarded house. These are the houses of the poorer princes and nobles, and the better class of the common people. The houses of the poorer classes of the common people are made on the same plan, only the sides are constructed of bamboo wattling. These are called "ruen fa tak," or open-sided house.