By some feat of navigational incompetence – possibly involving an upside-down online compass or Google Maps pointing every which way except the desired direction (and certainly not my own misplaced sense of direction) – I managed to take the E-line khlong boat from Thonglor Pier entirely the opposite way. Not slightly wrong, not “I’ll hop off in two stops and fix it”, but full, unwavering commitment to the error. Quite an achievement, given that the Saen Saep line offers only two options: towards the city, or towards parts unknown. Naturally, I chose the latter.

These boats have been racing up and down the canal since the 1990s, powered by ageing diesel engines that sound like a WWII submarine clearing its throat. They nominally carry around a hundred passengers, though on this particular afternoon it felt more like a hundred and fifty, plus my backpack. I doubt anyone keeps count.

Mine was packed to the gunwales. I sensibly positioned myself in a seemingly generous gap between bodies, only to discover why it had been left unclaimed. The tarpaulin roof is made of overlapping, sagging panels, each collecting its own private lake of rainwater. One enthusiastic lurch and an entire reservoir emptied itself directly onto my head, to the thinly disguised amusement of nearby seasoned commuters. I managed a resigned smile as the water trickled briskly down my spine. Bangkok canal travel initiation: complete.

Fifteen stops later – thunder cracking, lightning flashing, and the scenery becoming ever more obscure – I conceded that the surroundings were not going to become familiar. Time to get off.

Embarking and disembarking were adventures of their own. The boats do not exactly stop; they merely flirt with the idea of slowing down. In that theatrical split second, a wiry, perpetually exasperated crewman – the conductor, who hops on and off with feline agility – loops a rope around a bollard just long enough for passengers to throw themselves on or off. My own attempt was greeted with an expression combining pity, urgency, and the faintly hopeful assumption that I would not fall in.

I had arrived at a gloomy, deserted pier whose roof leaked in sympathy with the boat’s. The location could best be described as “somewhere in Bangkok, technically”. A flash of lightning illuminated corrugated shacks and shadowy warehouses, and the following crack of thunder delivered a distinctly Calvino-esque jolt — the sort of Bangkok backwater where, in Christopher G. Moore’s Vincent Calvino novels, rain hammers on corrugated roofs, shadows gather in unhelpful places, and a wrong turn tends to precede something regrettable happening to the detective.

“In the end, we are all characters in other people’s stories”

https://www.christophergmoore.com/product-page/district-18 – District #3 – a Vincent Calvino crime novel, 18th in the series

Mercifully, although khlong boats do not run far into the night, one appeared. Another eighteen baht bought me a place on a blissfully emptier vessel – this time heading the way I had intended all along – and I retraced my unintended odyssey, complete with the expected splashes, sharp turns, and several enthusiastic near-collisions with oncoming traffic.

True to form, I still overshot Asoke Pier by two stops, but E5 and Phetchaburi MRT were perfectly serviceable. After my brief career as a maritime liability, I decided it was far safer to continue underground.