Back in February, I told you about the Mega Bridge project that is taking place between Samut Prakan and Bangkok. This will be the first bridge that crosses the river in Samut Prakan. Actually, it crosses it twice as the river makes a large loop at this point. There is a lot of road construction going on in Samut Prakan at the moment. Many houses are being bulldozed to make way for the outer ring road which will eventually lead to this bridge and maybe another new one. I will be bringing updates on these constructions later. Today, I drove over to Phra Pradaeng to get some pictures of how the bridge looks now.

You can see in this picture from high altitude the foundation of the bridge and the circular access and exits ramps in the middle (5). The number (1) marks the car ferry which I had to use to cross the river. As I mentioned before, there is no bridge here yet. Boats heading to the port in Bangkok enter from the bottom of the photo and then go right around the loop for about 15 miles or so before coming back at the top of the picture. The figures (3) and (4) mark the towers which will take the road over the Chao Phraya River. At figure (2), you can clearly see a canal which was built in 1722 to help provide a short cut for boats heading for Bangkok. However, big ships still had to go the long way. I will talk about this canal more another day.

These photos show the circular exit ramps in the middle (5) which seem to be progressing very quickly. The picture on the right shows the two towers marked (4) in the picture from high altitude. So far they are not connected.

This is now a closer view. At figure (7) you can now clearly see a new canal they are building alongside the megabridge. This will shorten the shortcut which I previously mentioned. However, you will see from the photos below it still won't allow big ships to pass.

This is the northern end of the new canal marked with a figure (6). The picture on the right is looking the other way. The two towers are marked as figure (3) in the first high altitude picture.

With the completion of this new canal, the loop to the right now becomes even more of an island. I had never been to that area before, so I decided to go exploring this afternoon. I will tell you about this little adventure tomorrow.