The Phra Pradaeng PeninsulaThe jungle that lies in an oxbow curve of Bangkok's Chao Phraya river, barely two kilometers from the central business district, goes by more than one name—Phra Pradaeng and Bangkrachao are the most common, but it's also been nicknamed "the lung of Bangkok." It's an apt description for this precious antidote to a traffic-choked capital with too few parks.
Many city dwellers are unaware that Phra Pradaeng even exists—and that's just how its habitués like it. The area is served either by a single, hard-to-find road or by boat. The latter requires you to brave a rickety wooden jetty, buried in a dockside slum, before boarding a longtail boat—or else to head for Bangna temple, catching a peppermint-green ferry through the wakes of ocean-bound container ships and slow-moving rice barges. The reward is a sudden slice of rural Thailand, circa 1970, with bamboo-shaded creeks, crumbling old temples and raised walkways snaking through mango and banana plantations. The pace of life is slow here, and because tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon, the locals greet visitors with genuine delight. Reinforcing Phra Pradaeng's air of being a place lost in time is the surreal sight of villagers playing pétanque (the theory is that the game was bequeathed by 19th century French travelers).
Phra Pradaeng is "actually a peninsula, but it feels like an island," says Co van Kessel, a Dutch expat who led the first bicycle tours of the area more than a decade ago. Phra Pradaeng has no police station and no ATMs, he explains, just 128 kilometers of bike routes and plenty of wildlife. Proceed quietly, and you might see electric-blue kingfishers, racket-tailed drongos and giant monitor lizards. No less striking is the sight of Bangkok's skyscrapers, glimpsed above the swaying palm trees, reminding you just how close the city is, even as you relish this breath of fresh air.
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