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Thailand: A nurse feeding pigeons during her lunch break next to the Chao Phraya River in Thonburi, Bangkok

Although an important town for hundreds of years, Bangkok sat on the sidelines, located beside the Chao Phraya River between the ancient capital of Ayutthaya to the north and the sea to the south. It was only following a sequence of kingdoms and invasions in the regions to the north that Bangkok evolved into what it is today.

The story of Bangkok begins in the far north of Thailand. The soil from which tall buildings now sprout once provided sustenance for rice. At that time, as little as 1,500 years ago, the site of the future capital city lay beneath the ocean’s waters. Each monsoon season, the powerful currents of the Chao Phraya River swept southwards, carrying the soil from eroded farmland into the sea, gradually nudging the shoreline a little further into what is known today as the Gulf of Thailand.