Klong Toey is a district in central Bangkok which is the largest slum community in Thailand.
It’s a ramshackle area; the architecture ranges from illegally built breezeblock houses, stilt houses that stand over fetid canals, basic wooden shacks and, at the most basic level,
canvas and tarpaulin benders that collapse under the weight of the monsoon rains.
Despite the poverty, there is an energy to the place, a sense of community and hospitality that makes life have a warmth that takes it above its grim reputation. At the same time, it is not a place for the faint-hearted.
Klong Toey used to be known as the Slaughterhouse because until the 1990’s chickens, cows,
and other animals were butchered and gutted there for Bangkok's consumption.
The blood might not run as it used to, but your senses are still overwhelmed by the mass and variety of people.
Port and slaughterhouse workers, day labourers, scavengers, vendors, glue sniffers, prostitutes, karaoke singers, flamboyant grandmothers and families just trying to survive life in Klong Toey.

The fragrances, scents and odours of fresh cut flowers, spices, raw meat, petrol, cooking, wastes
and stagnant water all intermingle against the backdrop of the unregulated and bizarre assortment of dwellings.
I have been visiting Klong Toey since 2002 and it has always reminded me of Dante’s ‘gironi dell ‘inferno’, concentric circles of hell collapsing into an impenetrable centre that is the most impoverished, the most remote and the most dangerous. So remote that there are people still living in tents that were erected following the fire and clouds of toxic smoke that enveloped the area in 1991.
The biggest threat to the area and its people is not fire though. It is development. A big slice of Klong Toey has been marked for commercial development wihtout any compensation scheme for the locals relocation.