Bangkok’s massive makeover is about to begin ahead of its 250th anniversary as the Thai capital with the Phra Pok Klao Skypark crossing the Chao Phraya River.

Making use of an aborted Lavalin Skytrain span – the centre lane of Phra Pok Klao Bridge, which sits alongside Memorial Bridge (Saphan Phut) – the Skypark is due for completion in March next year.

It’s being touted as Southeast Asia’s first mid-river garden and observation point.

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) has allocated Bt122 million to build the walkway and viewpoint on the abandoned rail line known locally as Saphan Duan, meaning the “amputated bridge”.

“It will link Thon Buri and Phra Nakhon districts,” Assistant Professor Niramon Kulsrisombat, director of the Urban Development and Development Centre (UDDC) told The Nation Weekend.

Part of the city’s “Bangkok 250” project to beautify selected neighbourhoods, the Skypark site was nominated by Kadeejeen-Klong San riverside residents as having high potential for a garden, walkway and elevated bicycle lane.

Launched in 2015 by the UDDC and City Hall, Bangkok 250 will see the city’s top cultural locales improved over the next 13 years and connected to other historic sites.

Bangkok marks its 250th birthday in 2032.

“It’s city policy to provide a good environment for people and improve the quality of life,” Bangkok Governor Aswin Kwanmuang has said.

SGR Enterprise Co won the bidding to build the Skypark, which will be 200 metres long and eight metres wide.

“It will be strengthened and decorated with greenery and give residents and tourists a beautiful panoramic view of Bangkok,” said Somchai Dechakorn, director of the BMA’s City Planning Department.

Niramon added that the “universal design” concept will be used, ensuing that the facility is accessible to all, with elevators ready to carry people bringing bicycles and sitting in wheelchairs.

Niramon said Bangkok has many other disused or underused areas that can be turned into green spaces and recreation areas.

The Skypark is in keeping with a global trend involving urban parks.

Singapore has earned recognition as Asia’s greenest city thanks in part to its Garden by the Bay. New York’s High Line elevated park attracts four million visitors a year. Seoul’s Skygarden is a disused stretch of highway lined with 24,000 plants.

“Hopefully, the success of the Phra Pok Klao Skypark will become the model for the sustainable city development that’s part of the Private Public Civil Partnerships approach,” Niramon said.

Pintong Wongsakun, chairwoman of the Kadeejin community, said the Skypark would certainly improve the quality of life there.

“And because it will link us to Thonburi, we hope more tourists will visit our communities and learn more about our history and culture.”

She said Kadeejeen-Klong San residents would voluntarily help BMA officials take care of the park.

Completion of the Skypark will be a milestone among efforts to make the capital’s master plan a reality. The concept is to create an urban “oasis” with 600 rai of additional parks established beneath elevated expressways and flyovers, letting the capital breathe easier.

Bangkok, with an official population of around 5.6 million, has only 6.7 square metres of green space per capita. The World Health Organisation says cities should have at least nine if inhabitants are to remain healthy.

Niramon’s team plans to begin correcting that shortfall by turning underused areas into green and recreational spaces.

But development along the river continues to be dominated by privately built condos and malls. Niramon understands there has to be more public access to the riverbanks.

Her team, which pursues a concept called “urban acupuncture architecture”, is currently working on a 600-metre riverside walkway from Wat Kalayanamitra to the BMA’s Department of Law Enforcement offices on the Thon Buri side. There’ll be landscaped spots to picnic, exercise or just hang out.

A small-scale “extreme park” is envisioned for the vacant land beneath an expressway in the Urupong area in Ratchawithi district, complete with artificial hills for skateboarders. Such plans emerge from workshops organised for the local community so that everyone is guaranteed to have a “sense of belonging”.

“We’re designing each project specifically to fit the local community’s needs,” Niramon said. “Urupong has a lot of schools and apartments full of college students, so it’s getting a youth-friendly extreme park.”

It will have trees and shrubs to soak up the carbon dioxide drifting off the roads, and a coffee shop set inside a recycled freight container, plus solar cells and rainwater collectors.

In the Sathorn area, her team will turn a 3.5-kilometre stretch of Sathorn Klong from Taksin Bridge to Wireless Road into another elaborate park.

“Marijuana can only be used for four illnesses, namely epilepsy among children, nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, and neuralgia after other medications have failed – and this can only be done under a doctor’s watch. The use of marijuana for other illnesses is still being researched. People cannot simply apply it, as it might negatively react to their current medication,” he warned, adding that cannabidiol (CBD oil) must be from credible and legal sources to ensure a good standard of extraction.

He cited Bangkok’s Nopparat Rajathanee Hospital, which in the past 45 days had seen seven people aged 20 to 60 seeking emergency treatment for symptoms like vomiting, nausea and vertigo after placing a few drops of CBD oil under their tongue or smoking weed to treat their pre-existing conditions.

The patients included a man in his 20s, who used CBD oil to treat his stomach ache and began vomiting, a 35-year-old woman who used CBD oil to treat high-blood pressure and was hit with nausea and vertigo; and a weed smoker who developed stomach ache and nausea.

There was also a 60-year-old monk who applied CBD oil for muscle pain but developed vertigo and partial paralysis; a 45-year-old man with a history of heart disease and high-blood pressure who developed nausea and vertigo the morning after using CBD oil; a bed-ridden cancer patient, 75, who passed out after consuming CBD oil and had to be treated in hospital for two days; and a woman in her late 30s who used CBD oil to treat anxiety and began vomiting.

“There is no system to monitor the side effects of marijuana-based medicines, so I want major hospitals to gather data to see if there has been an increase in such cases,” he said, noting that his own inquiry at some emergency wards showed the cases were rising. Most of the patients had been made to believe by younger relatives or friends that marijuana can treat any ailment.

Dr Teerawat Hemajutha, head of the Information Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Medicine, said the marijuana-based medical treatments must be brought into the system by the end of this year. Misuse can cause fatal side effects, as well as result in dangerous interaction with the patients’ current medication.

A 28-year-old man recounted his own experience, in which he placed 30 drops of CBD oil instead of following the doctor’s advice to treat insomnia by taking no more than two drops at a time. His overdosing ended in him developing hallucinations, vertigo and seizures.

“Everything was spinning, I saw my child as a skeleton and my wife in double vision,” he recalled, adding he was certain it was the CBD oil because he had never used it before. He added that drinking alcohol or smoking weed years ago had not had such effects.

“It was a horrific experience. I won’t use it again like this, I’ve learnt my lesson,” he said.

Suriyan “Hook” Kla-thalae, a 36-year-old Moken born on Koh Surin, keeps dreaming that he’ll get his community’s boat, known as a kabang, back out on the Andaman Sea.

But it remains anchored on shore on the island, which lies 60 kilometres off the Phang Nga coast, waiting for tourists who rarely ever come.

A few years ago the kabang took a few tourists around the island as part of a pilot eco-tourism programme that was intended to inject some vigour back into the disappearing Moken way of life. But concerns over safety and tourism-related regulations forced the boat back to shore.

“I don’t want my traditions, my way of life as a Moken, to die,” says Hook, a younger member of the population that now numbers only about 1,000 throughout the Andaman islands.

The Moken, subjects of a years-long study by noted anthropologist Dr Narumon Arunothai of Chulalongkorn University’s Social Research Institute, are semi-nomadic, roaming among the islands half the year and settling down for the rainy season.

Koh Surin has been one of their homes since long before Mu Koh Surin National Park was established in 1981. Narumon noted that about 10 sites on Surin had Moken names. At least two communities – nearly 50 families – resettled there before being hit the 2004 tsunami and made headlines.

Narumon cited a Christian missionary named Walter White who travelled in the area in the 19th century, proselytising. In his journals he described the Moken’s amazing ability to identify every creature in the sea, reflecting their delicate observations on nature.

Swedish biologist Anna Gislen, who studied the Moken on Surin, watched Moken children seeing clearly underwater because their pupils were adjusted to the practice and remarked on the gulf in humanity’s “biological limitations”.

The Moken lead a generally carefree lifestyle, choosing to have as few possessions as possible.

“Their nomadic life had choices, and was not entirely without purpose,” wrote Narumon. “Once they chose to roam in the sea, they roamed so freely without realising that others would start staking claims on the sea.

“With countries marking territorial waters, the Moken ‘spirit of roaming’ has been disappearing little by little.”

A kabang boat parks off-shore along with new boats at Moken community on Surin Island.

The settlement

Over the years the Moken have settled on Surin and other islands almost permanently. Narumon estimated that nearly 75 per cent of the 50 Moken families on Surin had stayed put for over a decade, though 9-11 per cent still travel between islands, freely crossing the Thai-Myanmar border.

Those figures still hold true, as Narumon and National Human Rights Commissioner Tuenjai Deetes learned when they visited the Moken just last month.

Now that they have resettled, though, the Moken are facing fresh challenges.

Apart from territorial boundaries in the Andaman, their land is being given “protected” status, which in fact deprives them of access to natural resources.

In the late 1990s they were barred from collecting marine resources such as molluscs to sell to tourists.

Park officials decided to help by giving them jobs, but funding was limited and they were stuck working as labourers. Moken women were meanwhile encouraged to produce handmade items to sell to tourists.

Two communities on Ao Bon Lek and Sai End were merged after the tsunami and relocated to Ao Bon Yai, but the cramped situation has led to social and health problems, conflicts and poor living conditions.

As tribal people without nationality, the Moken have no access to basic public services such as healthcare and education.

They are considered a minority (khon chai khob) and as such are mistreated by the state, advocates say.

Tuenjai, who fights for the rights of minorities and stateless people, visited the Moken a few months after their houses were burned down accidentally.

Her aim was to help them secure nationality, telling them that children born on Thai soil have the right to Thai citizenship.

She managed to find people who helped deliver these children and hopes their testimony will serve as nationality verification, in turn setting an example for Moken living on other islands.

Advocates like Tuenjai also believe their long-established wisdom and traditions should be preserved, so they began pushing for “special cultural zones” to be designated to protect them as a minority under a 2010 Cabinet resolution. However, owing to the lack of supporting legislation, the resolution is doing little to protect these people.

Narumon said people don’t generally understand that the Moken are a modest people with few possessions who are attuned to nature.

With a little adjustment of perspective, though, public support for the Moken could be drummed up without having to wait for the resolution to become law, she said.

She is also placing her hopes in eco-tourism, which she believes is a new space that will allow the “spirit of roaming” to continue with dignity.

Hook too hopes the idea will allow him and his people to show how the Moken lead harmonious lives with nature and are willing to share their knowledge about everything from rocks to “underwater beings”.

“I want our traditions to survive in the new world,” says Hook, a good Moken diver-turned-a diver trainer assistant, who has made another attempt with the Moken Leads a Tour project as its key coordinor.

Negotiations now are ongoing with park officials to loosen regulations blocking the project.

The creation of community leaders and the designation of a new village for the Moken are also being discussed as part of a long-term resolution while the needed legislation catches up.

Some souvenirs based on their traditional knowledge.

Struggle on shore

Further inland, Larp Hanthalae, in her 50s, is fighting to reclaim her rai of ancestral land in Bang Sak, otherwise known as the Thab Tawan community.

Larp is Moklen – another tribe of so-called sea gypsies – whose land she says is being “snatched” by private entities.

The Chumchonthai Foundation, which learned about the matter while helping tsunami victims, says more than half of the 40-plus communities of sea gypsies living along the Andaman coast have lost land to private interests.

The foundation says the problem emerged after the tsunami when people began returning to their devastated land, only to find that others had laid claim. And as sea gypsies they were powerless to fight back.

Having no access to state services, they possessed no title deeds to prove ownership. They even lost access to ancestors’ graveyards and other places of spiritual importance.

Sporadic clashes were reported in which the sea gypsies were beaten up. The most notable case was in Phuket’s Rawai area a few years ago when they demanded access to a sacred site on the shore and were attacked by around 100 never-identified men.

In Thab Tawan, a few Moklen including Larp are facing charges filed by private entities that have taken their land.

Eventually, thanks to help from the foundation and its allies, a committee was set up to resolve the conflict and it managed to get portions of some properties returned.

Larp, however, has found this unacceptable, insisting that her ancestors’ land cannot be carved up. She wants it all back – a condition the private interest refuses to consider.

“I was born here. This is my land, my ancestors’ land, so how can they claim it as theirs?” she asks.

“I have no regrets about my demands and I will not mind if I don’t get a title deed. Title deeds can fly away in the wind, but our right to the land and the pillars of our houses cannot fly away. That’s all I want for my children – guaranteed rights,” Larp says.

Preeda Kongpan, director of the foundation and a member of a Cabinet-appointed panel on “sea gypsies”, known in Thai as chao lae, says it’s time to push for policy changes to address the issues more broadly.

Though the sea gypsies were the first of the minorities to be addressed at the policy level, time has proven that a Cabinet resolution alone is not enough.

It has to be translated into legislation so that measures can be officially pursued, Preeda says.

The committee and concerned agencies, including the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, are pushing for a law to protect these vulnerable tribes.

“Mass tourism, the deprivation of rights and other issues have been suppressing these people,” Preeda says.

“That’s why we need this resolution to be turned into law so we can overcome this situation, instead of just moving back and forth.”

Tuenjai, along with Dr Narumon, Preeda, and other anthropologists and human rights advocates paid a visit to Moken after their houses were burned down in a fire a few months ago.

The man was using a passport that identified him as Oh Chee Boon, a Malaysian, to check in at the airport on his way to Philippines on Philippine Airlines.

However the airport’s biometric system, which featured face recognition, showed that he did not match the system’s data storage information. During questioning the man insisted that he was Oh.

However, further investigation showed that the passport was fake and had been used in entering and exiting Thailand via the Thai-Myanmar border several times. Police also confiscated a cash of US$500,000.

Police charged the man with using a fake passport and suspected him of involving in transnational crime.