Andy Pitt

THE LONG TAILED BOATS OF BANGKOK

With the ever increasing number of cars on the roads of Bangkok and the difficulty of moving about the city I’ve avoided visiting the capital as much as possible. Indeed I’ve made almost any excuse not to have to make the journey there being only two reasons to go there, the main international airport and to buy boat timber at the lumber yards along the river. But all is not lost, there is an alternative way of getting about the city and despite the modern high rise buildings, the traffic and pollution of the modern world Bangkok is still a wonderful city. There’s a well organised and efficient express boat system ferrying passengers to and from work, school or the shops, along the bank of the Chao Praya River. Its quite remarkable that only a few minutes from the modern bustling city centre of Bangkok there's an amazing water world of canals, boats, villages of wooden Thai houses built over the water, Thai Temples and the lush green of Thailand. As a boat builder I wanted to see first hand the boats and boatyards of Bangkok, if they would change and survive the modern world.

Hire a long tail boat from the pier at Sanam Luang next to the Grand Palace from where ninety long tail boats operate. It was December, the city streets were hot and stressful but a cool breeze funnelled along the Chao Praya river and the golden roofs and pagodas of the spectacular Grand Palace shone brightly in the sun. It is easy and inexpensive to hire a boat, costing about 750 Thai baht for an hour an a half. There are many interesting things to see such as ornate Thai temples, the beautifully built Royal barges, the floating market and even a crocodile farm. We crossed the Chao Praya River north of the beautiful Wat Arun (The Temple of The Dawn) and entered the Bangkok Noi Canal and the maze of smaller canals that meander for miles and miles.

The "rua hang yao" or long tail boats, of Bangkok have become world famous. They are fast, colourful and used by local people and tourists alike as water transport to and from the residential canal homes of the Bangkok canal system. The boats vary in size from the small high speed boats of 14.7 feet (4.5 meters), to the more common ‘weatherly’ boats of 46 to 60 feet (14 to 18 meters). A fifty foot boat carries about thirty passengers but there are few certainties or exactitude's in Thailand. For example it is still unknown how many people or cargo can be carried by a 50cc motor cycle. Overhead is a tightly fitting awning on steel supports stretching the complete length of the vessel. This gives some protection from the sun and rain. The 60 foot boats have a beam of 6 feet, a length to beam ratio of ten to one. The 14 to 18 foot boats have a beam of 3 feet or so but this rapidly changes from the widest section aft to a long thin needle like bow. Apart from the long propeller shafts It’s perhaps the bows that have made this type of boat so individual and well known. Forward, the boats have a sharply pointed bow usually rising steeply to 4 or even 6.5 feet (1.2 to 2m). This characteristic steeply rising bow has, according to the builders, no other purpose than for good looks. Direct forward vision is impossible and low bridges are difficult or impossible to negotiate at high tide or in heavy swell. The bumps and scratches under the bridges bare witness to this. I wondered how this typed of boat developed. Some one told us during the nineteen fifties a group of foreigners working on a project in the South of Thailand in a shallow water area came up with the basic idea. Others say the boat was developed in Malaysia while someone told us Mr. Sanong Thitapura invented the long tail system in 1933. either way they have a striking similarity to British built ‘Atco Boatimpeller’ No one seems to really know where they came from but regardless of this the Thai's have adapted the idea and the narrow hull form is clearly ideal for the ‘klongs’ (canals) of Bangkok. They are flat bottomed with a shallow draft and can carry a lot of cargo very fast and there's one aspect of the long tail boat that is pure Thai. Every Thai boat, ship or fishing trawler, large or small, has a spirit in the bow of the vessel. Owners, captains and crews adorn the bows of their vessels with garlands of fresh flowers such as orchids and jasmine, burn incense sticks and pay respect to the "Mae Ya Nang" or spirit mother of the vessel to keep them safe and give them good fortune. When launching a new or newly refitted fishing boat hundreds of Chinese fire crackers are hung from the bows and let off during the launch.

With all the building materials and engines readily available in the markets of Bangkok the boats are fairly cheap to build. For example a 46 foot boat (14 meters) complete with engine and ready to go costs about 350,000 Thai Baht. Local hardwood is used throughout, the hulls being made of a hard durable reddish timber called Mai Takien Tong. For stringers and seats a light weight but less durable wood called Mai Yom Hom is used . Also reddish brown in colour it’s similar to cedar and varnishes and glues very well. The smaller boats are made almost entirely of Mai Yom Hom but use thin plywood for the hulls and decks. All the boats are well made and the quality of workmanship would not be out of place in many yacht yards in Europe or USA. Resorcinol and epoxy glue is now widely used along with stainless steel fastenings. The boats are also well finished and carefully painted in a variety of bright colours. Engine parts and supports are invariably chromed and highly polished. A 46 foot boat including the engine weighs 1.8 to 2 tons while a 60 foot boat weighs nearer to three tons. Many boats have engines of 100 to 120 HP others turbo charged engine of 220 HP. Mostly all are diesels. The famous tails or propeller shafts are five to six meters long with a high speed two blade propeller. A stainless steel shaft of about an inch diameter runs in a galvanised steel tube. On the end of the tube, just forward and below the propeller, is a short blade to protect the propeller when touching the bottom, or striking submerged logs and rubbish. Even so many of the boats carry a spare propeller. A support wire or chain is some times added between the long tail tube and the engine. Engine exhausts do not, as a rule, have silencers and the noise is dreadful. At even moderate speed conversation is impossible, but new laws prohibiting the noisy exhausts have been past and some have already adapted their engines with a water cooled exhaust silencers. Engines are direct water cooled and often have a large truck radiator cooling fan on the front just behind the driver. These fans have no protective cage and being open a constant threat. The engines are all second hand truck engines imported from Japan and sold in the markets of Bangkok. Nissan, Toyota, Hino, Mitsubishi are all available but by far the most popular is Isuzu. The engine is fully supported and moves on a single steel pivot through bolted to a heavy cross beam about a meter or so in from the stern. Attached to the forward end of the engine is a long stainless steel rod tiller with a throttle control and on the larger boats a gear lever. The smaller boats of 14 to 20 feet have no reverse and it takes experience to stop the boat in the right place. With a slight shallow "V" hull forward and a stepped hull section just aft of mid-ships these small boats are remarkable light and very fast with speeds well in excess of 40 knots. They have gut jumping acceleration like a jet aircraft at take off but are very limited on space and the seats are both very low and uncomfortable. You sit with your knees under your chin and hitting even small wavelets or wash from other craft the boat bangs down in the troughs making it an uncomfortable and some times painful ride. None of the boats had instruments so finding an accurate speed was tricky. By taking way points and time we were told the average boats of 50 to 60 feet do about 35 knots unloaded. T

The boat yards were small buildings capable of housing five or six boats. Like all the buildings they were built on piles above the water along the klongs. The boats operated from five in the morning to eleven at night seven days a week the boat drivers operate alone. Mr. Somprasong, our boatman, had been driving the long tails for twenty years. "It's OK" he said, "But the rainy season is difficult with fewer passengers. The boatyards were difficult to find and impossible with out local help. So we hired a variety of smaller boats making numerous trips to outlying villages. The water along the way appeared fairly clean did not smell badly with little rubbish in the water. The houses we visited were also clean and well cared for. Colourful pot plants usually surrounded the houses and landing stage and every house had a boat of some sort. At high speed we flew past houses open to the world while families sat on the floor six inches above the water eating, sleeping or watching television. The Klongs had a clear system of trade. There were many boats with flat square bows and sterns. They had a raised bulwark on a narrow ring deck and were all well kept and varnished. Invariably operated alone by elderly women in flat topped bamboo hats these boats moved about, from house to selling rice, bananas, papaya, mango, fresh meat and vegetables, even steaming hot noodles cooking over a gas ring in the bottom of the boat. Here and there the occasional flash of orange robes as grave faced Buddhist monks raced by at forty knots. The klongs are laid out like streets with telephone and power cables on cement posts high above the houses. Everything is available in this well organised water world. Many of the canals are two meters deep so a small yacht could cruise this area if she was not too high.

Many of the boatyards use no drawings, still building boats by eye, memory or experience passed down from previous generations. At other yards, particularly those run by younger men things were different. With a fast changing Thai society the younger boat builders, mostly trained at the boat building school in Ayutthaya north of Bangkok, now use design drawings. Five experienced boat builders can build a 60 foot boat in fifteen days, which if well built, will last from seven to ten years. These boats are hard working and need to be repainted and have a check up every year. On average larger refit is needed every three years. In the old days boats lasted longer, some times up to fifteen years but they say the wood was a better quality and the stresses and strains of smaller engines no doubt also played a part. Many hundreds of the boats continue to operate along the rivers and klongs of Bangkok. There were no new boats being built at the yards we visited and the number of boats operating remains about the same. Certainly they are such an integral part of Bangkok life the long tailed boat will likely never become an endangered species.

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