Explore Bangkok in Google Street View

Bangkok was a water city. Until the nineteenth century most movement was by boat along a network of canals, and houses faced the water rather than any road. Most of those canals were filled in and paved during the twentieth century, which is why the street layout makes so little sense: many of the main roads are former waterways, and they wander accordingly.

The canals that survive are the best thing to explore. Khlong Bangkok Yai and the Thonburi network on the west bank still have houses on stilts facing the water, temples with landing steps, and boats as ordinary transport. Some of the routes were captured by boat-mounted camera, which is rare and gives you the original orientation of the city, looking at the fronts of buildings from the water.

The Grand Palace and Wat Pho sit together on the east bank and both were captured on foot. The scale of the palace complex is difficult to convey in photographs because it is a walled compound of many buildings rather than a single structure, and moving through it virtually is the only way to get the sense of accumulation. Wat Pho next door holds a forty six metre reclining Buddha in a building barely larger than the statue.

For contemporary Bangkok, follow Sukhumvit Road. It runs east for many kilometres with the Skytrain overhead most of the way, and the numbered side streets, called sois, branch off it in both directions. Each soi is effectively its own neighbourhood, and the difference between an even-numbered and odd-numbered soi at the same point on the road can be considerable.

Chinatown, along Yaowarat Road, is the densest signage in the city and one of the best captures. Gold shops, food stalls and stacked Chinese and Thai signs along a road that curves for a mile and a half. It was photographed at a time of day when the stalls are up, which makes it far more useful than a quiet morning capture would have been.

One thing to watch for. Bangkok's Skytrain and its elevated expressways run above many main roads, and in Street View you are frequently under a concrete deck. It changes the light and the feel of the imagery considerably, and it is the clearest sign of a city that ran out of ground space and built a second level.