Samut Prakan is a city at the Chao Phraya River's estuary, the administrative center of Samut Prakan province and, at the same time, part of Bangkok Metropolitan Region. The latter is proven well by the fact that, since recent times, you can travel by Bangkok skytrain there. And this is how we arrived in the city on September 3, 2023.

Samut Prakan's Most Famous Attraction (Don't Go!)

Samut Prakan isn't a popular travel destination. Although, it has one place often visited by foreign travelers; it's called The Ancient City. This is a vast area that houses replicas of famous Thai buildings where tourists enjoy riding scooters and buggies between the mentioned constructions. A feast of fakeness some travelers love, which honestly makes me sick. One of the reviews on Google Maps:

What person you should be to come to Thailand for several days and to spend a day in this amusement park watching fake Thai temples whereas you can see original ones and enjoy true traveling? 🤢 And, then, they call this experience "exploring Thai culture". 😁

However, this hardly concerns us. I have spent so much time in Bangkok in my life that I can no longer be considered a tourist, rather a sort of expat. And my friend is just a Bangkokian (not knowing where to go on weekends because we have already been to everywhere too many times...)

Last Sunday, we were busy for a while, and, when at 2 pm the question arose where to go, we decided, at last, to visit Samut Prakan Tower.

Samut Prakan Tower on Google.Maps

Although, I had never visited the tower, this wasn't my first time in Samut Prakan City. In June 2023, I had gone there to get a ferry to Phi Suea Samut Fort in hope to photograph birds (hopes had been 500% justified!).

We decided to re-visit the fort too.

Samut Prakan Tower

It's a 180-meter-tall construction, free admission, you need anything more to know? 😀

However, snapshots from Google Maps reviews were rather dull and cast doubt on me. But I told myself that, at least, views of Mother of Thailand, the Chao Phraya River, and its mouth from such a height can't be bad. And I was right! 😀

Samut Prakan City. On top left, the estuary of the Chao Phraya River flows into the Gulf of Siam (on the horizon).

Not Ancient But Historic

Samut Prakan City isn't ancient. It is said, it was founded in 1819. The strategic location at the mouth of the main Thai river was apparently the main reason for the creation of the city. But the city didn't look nice for a long while. For example, this is what a governess at the Thai court Anna Harriette Leonowens wrote about the town:

Mean, shabby, irregular town of Paknam, or Sumuttra P'hra-kan ("Ocean Affairs")... ...a more disgusting, repulsive place is scarcely to be found on Asian ground.

The houses are built partly of mud, partly of wood, and [...] only the upper story is habitable, the ground floor being the abode of pigs, dogs, fowls, and noisome reptiles. The "Government House" was originally of stone, but all the more recent additions have been shabbily constructed of rough timber and mud. This is one of the few houses in Paknam which one may enter without mounting a ladder or a clumsy staircase, and which have rooms in the lower as well as in the upper story.

They used to eat monitor lizards?!

The opposite bank with Phra Samut Chedi (on left in the middle) we visited after Samut Prakan Tower; images are below

One might think that the Englishwoman was biased in her judgment, however, she gives a nice review of the fort and the temple on the opposite bank:

Near this place are two islands. The one on the right is fortified [Phi Suea Samut Fort], yet withal so green and pretty, and seemingly so innocent of bellicose designs, that one may fancy Nature has taken peculiar pains to heal and hide the disfigurements grim Art has made in her beauty. On the other, which at first I took for a floating shrine of white marble, is perhaps the most unique and graceful object of architecture in Siam [Phra Samut Chedi]; shining like a jewel on the broad bosom of the river, a temple all of purest white, its lofty spire, fantastic and gilded, flashing back the glory of the sun, and duplicated in shifting, quivering shadows in the limpid waters below.

You can download the book The English Governess at the Siamese Court for free on Project Gutenberg: Free eBooks.

Photography at Samut Prakan Tower

Of course, I wanted to photograph everything - every acre of the land lying under my feet.

But from my experience, I know that this is an unconstructive impulse that not only fills your HDDs with hundreds of identical photos, but also robs you of the opportunity to take truly interesting photographs. However, I succumbed to it for the quarter of an hour. One football field really interested me. I took about 20 pictures, but none of the images was interesting, as it turned out. 😁 However, here are some nice rooftops:

Luckily, I brought a wide-angle lens with me, 24mm. When I put it on the camera, instead of 50mm, I realized what I was missing so much - a wider angle.

The wide angle allowed me to combine visitors and city panoramas in the frame.

A happy child looking through binoculars is always symbolic and inspiring.

Because of the sun and shadows, there was a feeling that we were on some kind of summer veranda floating in the sky...

Phra Samut Chedi and Fort

We ended with the tower at around 4 pm, and set out to a ferry (6 baht one way and 6.5 baht for a ticket back). Streets didn't look awesome, this is just a regular Thai city. But to me, it was very interesting to see opportunities for a photography walk in search of Thai block architecture, one with its own bizarre charm, that slowly becomes a thing of the past. This type of architecture is in my focus since recent times.

I asked my friend to prepare his amazing mobile camera with the great zoom because, when I had had a trip there in June, I had seen a cormorant right from the ferry. But this time not a bird but people got my attention, Thai sailors in that amazing uniform!

That monument behind is Phi Suea Samut Fort. But first we moored at a neighboring bank and had a walk passing the mentioned historical Phra Samut Chedi:

The temple was built in 1827-1828 by king Rama II. Initially, its territory was on a separate island which, among others, Anna Harriette Leonowens mentioned (the quotes above). Later, the island became part of the mainland.

I had visited the fort in June 2023 and found an abundance of kingfishers there. As for my friend, he was visiting the fort for the first time. The fact that I was showing him, a Thai person, something new in Thailand was a subject of pride to me, pride of the explorer. 🙂

Phi Suea Samut Fort Nature Walk

As soon as you cross the bridge, all urban noises stop; no rumble of motors and no scraps of words, no ringing, knocking, rustling, only the voices of birds. It seems that all these city sounds do not constitute any problem but, as soon as you find yourselves on an island, you exhale with relief.

This time, we did not see kingfishers but spotted a dozen cormorants in the sky.

I also heard signals of coppersmith barbets, birds that became my personal guides to the world of birding, but I had no telephoto lens with me. Another specialty of the fort island was mudskippers, we saw Periophthalmodon schlosseri and Boleophthalmus boddarti. Thai wiki article about the mudskippers states that there are 3 species in Thailand; the one we didn't see is Periophthalmus barbarus, hope next time.

I got no stunning images of the fort itself - the sun was too low. At the old fort pier, we used the very last rays of the sun for a little lifestyle photo shoot.

More stories from #Thailand are ahead! Check out the previous ones on my personal Pinmapple map.

I took the images on September 3, 2023 with a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G on a full frame Nikon D750 in Samut Prakan City and Phra Samut Chedi district, Thailand.