Bangkok & the Central Plains

The plains were settled long before the Thais. From about the 6th to the 11th century the Mon-speaking Dvaravati culture flourished here, with centres at Nakhon Pathom, U Thong in Suphan Buri and Lopburi, and it left Buddhist stupas, dharma wheels and some of the earliest Buddhist art in the country. By the 11th century the Khmer empire had drawn Lopburi, then called Lavo, into its orbit, and its laterite towers still stand in the town.

In 1351 King U Thong founded Ayutthaya on an island where the Chao Phraya, Lopburi and Pa Sak rivers meet. For four centuries it ruled Siam and traded with China, Japan, Persia and Europe, and the foreign quarters of the Portuguese, Dutch and Japanese lay just outside its walls. In the 17th century King Narai made Lopburi a second capital and received embassies from Louis XIV. The Burmese wars were fought across these fields: tradition places King Naresuan's elephant duel of 1593 in Suphan Buri, and the villagers of Bang Rachan in Sing Buri are remembered for holding off Burmese forces before Ayutthaya fell in 1767.

Taksin regrouped at Thonburi on the west bank, and in 1782 Rama I moved the capital across the river to Bangkok, building the Grand Palace on Rattanakosin Island. Canals dug in the 19th century opened the plains to commercial rice growing for export. The 20th century made Bangkok one of Asia's great cities, while the great flood of 2011 swamped Ayutthaya's temples and industrial estates and reached northern Bangkok.

This is the land of standard Thai: the speech of Bangkok and the plains became the national language, and the capital's court traditions set the national style in dance, music and manners. Khon, the masked dance drama of the Ramakien epic, is performed in Bangkok and is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, as is the traditional massage taught at Wat Pho.

The region is also more mixed than it looks. Bangkok's Chinese-Thai community, largely of Teochew origin, shaped Yaowarat, the Chinatown, and much of the city's business life; Chinese New Year and the autumn vegetarian festival fill its streets. Mon villagers still live on the island of Ko Kret in Nonthaburi, known for its pottery, and Bangkok has long-established Muslim communities descended from Malay, Cham and Persian settlers. Suphan Buri is linked with luk thung, Thai country music, and has produced many of its stars.

Festivals follow the Buddhist and farming calendar: Loy Krathong, when small banana-leaf floats with candles are set on the rivers in November, is at its busiest in Bangkok and Ayutthaya; Songkran is a three-day water fight in April; Lopburi throws a banquet of fruit for its monkeys each year; and Nakhon Sawan's Chinese New Year festival has been held for more than a century.

Bangkok dominates. The city proper has an estimated 9 million residents and the wider metropolitan area, including Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani and Samut Prakan, over 17 million, dwarfing every other Thai city. It holds the government, the royal court, the big companies and most of the universities. Outside it, towns are modest: Nakhon Sawan, the main city of the upper plains, has around 80,000 people in its municipality, and Ayutthaya, Lopburi, Suphan Buri and Nakhon Pathom are provincial centres.

The economy is a belt of factories, warehouses and ports around the capital — car parts and electronics in the Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani industrial estates, seafood processing in Samut Sakhon — set against the rice paddies that still cover the plains further north, farmed with machines and several crops a year where irrigation allows.

In Bangkok the day starts early to beat the traffic, with breakfast bought from street carts and monks on alms rounds at dawn; many commute an hour or more each way. Current concerns include congestion, PM2.5 smog in the dry season, the risk of floods in a low-lying city that is slowly sinking, the cost of housing, and the city's recurring role as the stage for national political protest.

Central Thai cooking is the version most of the world knows, but the plains have their own specialities. Bangkok's street food runs from khao man gai, poached chicken on rice cooked in its stock, and kuay jap, rolled rice noodles in a peppery pork broth, to Yaowarat's Chinese-Thai stalls selling roast duck, seafood and bird's-nest soup. Kuay tiao reua, boat noodles in a dark, spiced broth, were once sold from canal boats and are still served in tiny bowls along the canals north of the city.

Ayutthaya is known for river prawns grilled whole and for roti sai mai, thin sweet pancakes wrapped around strands of spun sugar. Nakhon Pathom is famous for its sweet pomelos. Samut Songkhram is known for pla thu, the short mackerel that is boiled and sold in small bamboo baskets and eaten with nam phrik, a pounded chilli relish, while Samut Sakhon is a fishing port selling dried squid and shrimp paste.

Sweets are a central tradition, many of them with egg-yolk recipes credited to Ayutthaya's Portuguese community, such as foi thong, golden threads of egg yolk cooked in syrup. Khao niao mamuang, mango with sticky rice, is sold across the plains in the hot season. Cha yen, sweet orange iced tea with condensed milk, and fresh coconut water are the everyday drinks.

Bangkok's old city on Rattanakosin Island holds the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, the reclining Buddha of Wat Pho and, across the river in Thonburi, the porcelain-covered prang of Wat Arun. Beyond them are the Golden Mount, the Jim Thompson House, the Chinatown of Yaowarat, the Chatuchak weekend market, Thonburi's canals by long-tail boat and the jungle-like Bang Krachao river bend. In Samut Prakan, the Ancient City open-air park and the Erawan Museum's three-headed elephant sit on the southern edge of the city.

North of the capital, Ayutthaya's island is the region's greatest historic site, with Wat Phra Si Sanphet, Wat Mahathat and the Buddha head caught in tree roots, Wat Chaiwatthanaram on the riverbank and the royal summer palace at Bang Pa-in just to the south. Lopburi adds Phra Prang Sam Yot, King Narai's palace and its monkeys; Saraburi has Wat Phra Phutthabat, a shrine built over a Buddha footprint; and Nakhon Nayok has waterfalls on the southern slopes of Khao Yai.

West and south, Nakhon Pathom's Phra Pathom Chedi towers over the town, and Samut Songkhram — the neighbour of Damnoen Saduak's famous floating market, just across the border in Ratchaburi — has its own floating markets at Amphawa and Tha Kha and the Mae Klong railway market, where stalls pull back for the train. The rice country runs north through Ang Thong, Sing Buri, Chai Nat and Uthai Thani to Nakhon Sawan, where the Ping and Nan meet at Pak Nam Pho and the lake of Bueng Boraphet draws waterbirds.