Thread: Bang Pu or possibly Bang Poo...

A few weeks ago my wife suggested that we make a quick day trip to the beach. I thought that this was a great idea as our last few getaways had been up North and I hadn't been to a beach for months!

"So where do you want to go... Sri Ratcha? Jom Tien?...", I asked. "Bang Pu", she replied. Now I had actually been to Bang Pu, or Bang Poo, once before when a Thai friend had driven me out there for lunch. While the restaurant there was quite nice, I didn't recall there being much in the way of beach there, just mangrove swamps and mud flats. However, I'm an eternal optimist and happily hopped into a taxi with her.

Some friends of hers live near there and so we stopped by their place first and then went to the beach in their car. Bang Pu is near the east side of the mouth of the Chao Phraya River, in the lower right corner of this map:


hmmm... I seem to be having some trouble with the pictures. I might have to close Firefox and try again with Internet Explorer. Anyway, here are a couple of links with a map & stuff:

Maps of Samut Prakan Province - Sukhumwit Road

Bang Pu Seaside Resort and Sukta Pier in Samut Prakan Province, Thailand

OK, here's the map:



The bit labeled Sukta Bridge is actually a pier with a big restaurant at the end:



If you look closely, you can see a lot of birds there. For some reason there are a ton of birds around here:



We didn't actually go out to the resaurant this time, we had a picnic instead. But when I ate there a couple of years ago I seem to recall that there are several restaurants (all seafood naturally) and I think that there is a dance floor out there too.

Remember that I was hoping that there was a beach there? Well, this is what the coastline looks like :
Looking West



Looking East

Bang Pu was a very popular seaside resort back about 40 years ago. This restaurant, however has gone downhill a bit since then:



Here is an old bungalow:



There are a couple of newer bungalows as well:

Mangrove swamp:

This bit of swamp is on the landward side of the road.



This is the seaward side:


As you can see, all of the trash gets caught in the swamp!

You can see some barges being towed out of the Chao Phraya in this pic:



There was a loop road near the pier which was apparently popular with local joggers. I only got a few of them in this picture, but there were a lot of them a few minutes earlier, mostly wearing yellow shirts of course: