Vimol Kogar on the Decline of Sampheng

The local Indian community who migrated to Thailand between 1900 and 1950 generally started their businesses in two locations by the riverside. The establishments like Café India started at Oriental Avenue in Bang Rak, and the pioneers of textiles like Boor Singh, Inder Singh, and Gian Singh Nandsingh started in the 1900s in Rajawongse Road before some of the firearm-merchants moved to Burapha Road.

At that time, a standard shophouse was sold at approximately THB 10,000 to THB 20,000 pre-WW1. It housed the business on the ground floor as well as the family on the upper floors. Moreover, jewellers were mainly on the tourist stretch between Oriental Pier to Wat Muang Kee to Si Phraya and were mainly from Gujarat, India.

The main artery that flows in Sampheng is known as Vanich 1, and at its peak in the 1990s, a standard 60 sqm shop could sell for as high as THB 100 million. At the time, Sampheng real estate could compete with Siam Square and Nana and the priciest properties per talang wah (a unit of land equal to four square metres) in Thailand. Even today, Sampheng and Yaowarat offer among the best-imported fruit at the top of Yaowarat Soi 6. This offers a clue to where the wealthiest businesses were in the 1980s and 1990s.

The end of Sampheng started in 1997 when many importers faced exchange losses in their businesses due to the Thai Baht depreciating against the US Dollar from a band of THB 24.80 to THB 25.99 to over THB 41 overnight. Losses in trading and bad debts saw many businesses, not only textiles but many others, lose their footing. After a recovery by 2002, we saw another peak in 2007 and again in 2015 before COVID-19 in 2019 onwards.

Post 2020, valuations in Sampheng have fallen, symptomatic of the fall of the textile trade and the rise of online commerce – a factory to an online platform to consumer model. Additionally, unlimited imports through our porous land borders via Hunnan Province in China via Myanmar to border cities like Tachileik bring ready-made garments at under THB 100 per piece and have totally decimated the Sampheng textile market between 2020 and 2025. In fact, I would estimate about 50% of the textile businesses have closed down in Sampheng since 2020.

But there is a new trend emerging. Textiles have been replaced by hotels and hostels at rates of between THB 600 to THB 4,233 per night. The trend towards converting three or six shophouses with a total land area of about 180 sqm to 360 sqm is nothing new nationwide but relatively new in Sampheng. If you walk in this area, you are never more than 100 steps away from a relatively new hotel charging less than USD 50 per night.

I believe the gentrification and reinvention of Sampheng will be in tourism. In fact, the most popular photo spot currently in Sampheng is Song Wad Road, which sees at least 1,000-5,000 visitors per day, taking snaps and patronising the newly opened cafes and bakeries. Sampheng will find a new identity and a new voice among the young and restless who want to visit an old part of town they believe has nothing to do with them but is engrained in their ancestry and blood.