Saphan Lek

In October 2015, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, in a bid to fight encroachment of public space, and with the support of the ruling military junta, successfully evicted the vendors/hawkers and demolished the structure.

The merchants, vendors and hawkers built a marketplace illegally by covering the entire canal using iron plates for making the floor of the market.

This caused the area to become a major marketplace, for a while, until the pier was closed by the city's development authority and the hawkers and market shop owners evicted from.

In 2014 the government of Prayut Chan-o-cha created a new policy to deal with the Saphan Lek street hawkers and merchant who used the sidewalk of the district road to illegally set up their shops permanently.

Merchants and hawkers refused to follow the policy and initiated a protest by deciding to not move to the locations specified by the government even after the time limit.

Following public support, the policy progressed slowly with only some of the shop owners and street hawker shifting to the place that the government had provided.