For more than half a century, Thailand's state-run tobacco monopoly has mass-produced cigarettes in a vast industrial park in Bangkok. Large trucks constantly brought raw tobacco into the city center, taking away millions of cigarettes.
But now that cancer-causing complex has been replaced by something entirely different: a green space that brings fresh air to the congested and often smoggy central Bangkok.
The transformation was a complete success, creating a 102-acre oasis for city dwellers. An expansion of the existing Benjakiti Park, the site includes a mile-long elevated walkway, water purifying wetlands, 8,000 new trees, pickleball and basketball courts, and a dog walking zone. Masu.
Skywalks are also known as walkways and are especially popular with young people. At sunset, the heat of the day eases and it is crowded with visitors, many taking selfies.
“Benjakiti Park is at the top of my list of places to take photos,” said Pongsathong Thaton, a freelance photographer who was snapping pictures of a group of university graduates in gowns frolicking on the skywalk. “It's a very popular spot.”
The new section of the park was officially opened in August 2022 to commemorate the 90th birthday of Thailand's Queen Mother, Queen Sirikit. Some tourist attractions, such as museums, are still unfinished.
It is unusual for a major city to add a new large-scale park, especially in densely populated Southeast Asia. The $20 million addition will be nearly twice the size of the original park, with a lake and popular jogging trails.
Bangkok, home to 11 million people, needs more places like this. A 2022 report found the city falls below the World Health Organization's minimum per capita green space standard for urban areas of 9 square meters (about 97 square feet).
Like New York's Central Park, Benjakiti is surrounded by skyscrapers. It is located just a few blocks from Sukhumvit Road, which is one of the city's busiest thoroughfares. The air along Sukhumvit is filled with car exhaust fumes, and pedestrians criss-cross the busy sidewalks, passing office buildings, hotels, vertical shopping malls, street vendors, and the occasional beggar.
Mateusz Tatala, a software product designer from Poland, said he was surprised to stumble across a forest park in the middle of a city known for its magnificent temples, street food, vibrant entertainment scene and now marijuana shops. .
“I can still hear the sounds of nature,” Tatara said during an evening visit to the park. “It's a quiet and cool place.”
Just then, a fruit bat, a large fruit bat with a fox-like face, soared overhead and perched on a nearby tree.
“When you think of Bangkok, this is not the first thing that comes to mind,” Tatara says.
The government designated the tobacco factory site as parkland in the early 1990s, and the first section of Benjakiti opened soon after. However, more than a quarter of a century passed before the state-owned company, then known as the Tobacco Monopoly Corporation of Thailand, handed over the entire site.
Prayuth Chan-ocha, the military commander who seized power in a 2014 coup and became prime minister, had a personal interest in expanding the park, even as he suppressed pro-democracy movements. He called for a creative approach to park design (and suggested a dog walking area, a rarity in Bangkok).
To speed up construction amid the pandemic, Prayuth's government has brought in the military. At one time he had as many as 400 soldiers working on this project.
“The soldiers did everything,” said landscape architect Chachanin Sun, who helped design the new section. “They're really proud of this park.”
Bangkok, on the Gulf of Thailand, was built on a wetland. The flood-prone city once had so many canals that Europeans called it the Venice of the East. Over time, many of the canals were paved over and others became polluted backwaters.
One of the stinking canals, the sewage-contaminated Klong Huysinto River, was used as the water source for the new park's wetlands. Water is pumped from the canal into a series of pools and channels, and sunlight and plants clean the canal.
The odor disappears long before the water reaches the main pond of the wetland, which is filled with lotuses and other aquatic plants. There, leftover sediment sinks to the bottom as the water flows to the edge of the park. After four days, the plants will be clean enough to be used for irrigation.
“Nature maintains its own balance,” Chachanin said during an afternoon walk in the park. “We didn’t expect it to go this well.”
The soldiers built 500 islands within the swamp, using blocks of concrete salvaged from destroyed factory buildings as foundations. They also planted over 400 different types of trees.
A self-sustaining ecosystem, the expanded park quickly attracted wildlife such as storks, herons, snakes, monitor lizards, and dragonflies that eat more than 100 mosquitoes a day.
Its centerpiece, the Skywalk, zigzags gently up and down over the wetlands. “Even when I'm walking, I can't see my final destination, so I want to move on and see what's next,'' Chachanin says.
Only four buildings remain of the gigantic tobacco factory that once devastated central Bangkok. Three of his properties have been converted into sports facilities. All four have walls and portions of the roof removed and are open to the outside world. This is a new approach that Chachanin calls natural air conditioning.
Some of the rafters remain intact, like the factory skeleton. Newly planted trees are already growing from it.
“When you stand inside the building, you can see the nature around you,” Chachanin said.
Muktita Suhartono Contributed to the report.