T.I.C.D.: Samut coasts (Part II: Bang Khun Thian, Samut Prakan & Chachoengsao)
Part two of the Samut coasts, plus a little Bangkok and Chachoengsao, condensed.
Welcome back to the Thai Island & Coastal Directory, a book-in-progress that I expect to be the most complete guide to coastal Thailand ever written in English, covering more than 800 islands. For info on how to use the T.I.C.D. and a working Table of Contents, paddle over here. Thank you for reading!
T.I.C.D. ticker: So far, we’ve covered 354 islands and 102 mainland coastal areas in 26 sections, including this one.
Entering Bangkok special administrative area…
Yes, Bangkok has a coastline. It is muddy, fishy, and only six km long — although, up here on the Bay of Bangkok’s northern coast, there is very little to distinguish the shorelines of one province from the next.
The megacity of Bangkok, or Krung Thep Mahanakorn to use both its common Thai and official name (go ahead and try to pronounce the full name), is diced up a little oddly in terms of administrative borders. Some outskirts that are heavily populated and linked to inner Bangkok by metro, such as parts of Nonthaburi and Samut Prakan, are administered by those separate provinces rather than falling under Bangkok and its special administrative area (S.A.A.) status. Meanwhile, the Bangkok S.A.A. contains a few distant swathes of terrain that extend like fingers into more rural areas that are almost more associated with those surrounding provinces.
Perhaps the best known of these rural-leaning parts of what is often called “Bangkok province” is the district of Bang Khun Thian, which reaches from the city’s southwest to the Gulf. Here, erosion and water pollution already make life difficult, and sea-level rise predictions indicate a trying future for the area.
Still, a lengthy elevated bikeway, built in the late 2010s, is a lot of fun to explore while glimpsing erosion prevention strategies first hand. We’ve often traveled down to Bang Khun Thian when in need of a short break from the big city, or visited it as part of day trips that also covered sites in the two neighboring Samut provinces, all linked by the straight road running alongside Khlong Sappha Samit.
Coastal areas below are arranged from W to E.