Big, smoggy Bangkok gets a badly needed breath of fresh air with Benjakitti Park

BANGKOK – For more than half a century, Thailand’s state-owned tobacco monopoly mass-produced cigarettes at a sprawling industrial estate in Bangkok. A steady stream of heavy trucks brought raw tobacco into the heart of the city and hauled millions of cigarettes away.

“Benjakitti Park is at the top of my list for places to take pictures,” said freelance photographer Pongsaton Tatone, who was on the Skywalk snapping shots of a group of university graduates cavorting in their gowns. “It is a very popular spot.” A view from a high-rise condominium of the newly expanded Benjakitti Park in central Bangkok, a city of 11 million people. In the heart of this megacity, an industrial site has been turned into an oasis for residents, as well as birds, bats and mosquito-eating dragonflies. PHOTO: NYTIMES

Just then, a flying fox – a large fruit bat with a fox-like face – soared overhead and landed in a nearby tree.The government designated the tobacco factory site as parkland in the early 1990s, and the first section of Benjakitti opened soon after that. But more than a quarter-century passed before the state-owned company, known then as the Thailand Tobacco Monopoly, handed over the entire site.

Chatchanin Sung, a landscape architect who helped design the expansion at Benjakitti Park, walks along a pathway through the wetlands in the central Bangkok park. PHOTO: NYTIMES

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