About 3,000 people in Bangkok's Sathorn District are descendants of gardeners and carpenters from Central Java who were brought to Siam in the late 19th century. Their lineage was shaped not by war or trade, but by a king's admiration for a botanical garden across the sea. That admiration led him to travel from Bangkok to Java three times over the course of three decades.
It all began in 1871, when King Rama V set foot on Java for the first time. He was only 18 years old, and the visit was primarily intended as a study tour to observe how the Dutch governed a colony whose territory was far larger than Siam.
During this first visit, he did not specifically visit the Bogor Botanical Gardens. It was only on his two later journeys, in 1896 and 1901, that the botanical garden became a destination he returned to repeatedly. Rama V came back to Buitenzorg again and again, sometimes staying for months, always accompanied by Melchior Treub, the garden's director at the time.
What captivated him was not merely the well-maintained landscape, but the research behind it. He was fascinated by how coffee, tea, and cinchona were cultivated and transformed into globally important commodities through experiments conducted there.
From that admiration emerged an unusual request for inter-kingdom relations at the time. Upon returning to Bangkok, Rama V asked Javanese kings and local rulers for assistance, not by sending troops or tribute, but by providing skilled gardeners and woodcarvers.
Several records state that they came from Kendal and Demak in Central Java and traveled to the Siamese court in the late 19th century .
A Garden with Competing Claims
The craftsmen did indeed arrive in Bangkok. What remains unclear, however, is which garden they worked on. This is where the historical record begins to diverge.
Research published in the AMCA-18 proceedings states that they helped build the garden now known as Lumphini. However, the official history of Bangkok's public park presents a different account.
It says Lumphini originated from the Sala Daeng estate owned by King Rama VI and was donated for public use only in 1925, without mentioning any involvement of Javanese craftsmen.
A third version comes from Kompas, which states that the craftsmen were instead employed to restore the Grand Palace complex and Saranrom Palace and Garden, which had been developed under the initiative of King Rama V since 1874.
These three accounts have yet to converge into a single established conclusion. The only point of agreement is that the group of Javanese craftsmen did come to Siam and ultimately settled there.
A New Home in Sathorn
From that settlement, the Javanese community in Sathorn gradually took shape, with Masjid Jawa at its center.
The land was donated in 1894 by Haji Muhammad Saleh, who, according to Kompas, was the father-in-law of KH Ahmad Dahlan, the founder of Muhammadiyah. The mosque was built around 1905 in the style of a traditional Javanese joglo house, a design that has been preserved to this day. It remains a small piece of Central Java in the middle of Bangkok's urban landscape.
Around the mosque and along the surrounding streets, street vendors sell Siamese-Javanese fusion dishes. One of the best known is gaeng khaek yawa, a chicken curry with raisins that has become a signature dish of the local Pasar Jawa.
The village's population was recorded at around 3,000 in 2016. Residents live alongside Buddhist, Christian, and Teochew Chinese neighbors. Most of the community remains Muslim, while traditions such as kenduri, selamatan, and sungkeman continue to be practiced as markers of their Javanese identity.
Ngoko on the Brink of Disappearing
The traditions have endured, but the language has not. Third-generation Javanese descendants in Sathorn are still reported to speak Javanese ngoko. By the fourth and fifth generations, however, Thai has become the dominant language. Even religious sermons at Masjid Jawa are now delivered in Thai rather than Javanese.
The AMCA-18 proceedings attribute this rapid language shift to Thailand's ultra-nationalist policies between 1939 and 1947, which promoted the slogan of one religion, one nation, one language, and one culture for all citizens, including minority communities such as the Javanese descendants in Sathorn.
More than a century after Rama V returned from Bogor with the idea of bringing Javanese royal gardeners to Siam, what remains of Java in the neighborhood is no longer its ancestral language.
Instead, its legacy lives on through the mosque's architecture, old Javanese names preserved in family lineages, and a plate of raisin chicken curry that continues to be sold along Sathorn's streets every day.
