KHLONG SAM WA — Three dogs came out barking as a campaign truck rolled into a deep soi off Pracha Ruem Chai 57, where rice fields and cows are still common inside Bangkok’s city limits.

“Oh, dogs, dogs, turn around, turn around,” Sayun Kusonphan said. “Let’s not risk it. They’re scary.”

As the truck reversed, Sayun asked the homeowner if the dogs bite. 

“Yes, they do,” she said.

Bitten by a dog as a child, the 60-year-old candidate waited until the barking stopped before stepping down to hand a flyer to the resident.

“No candidate ever comes in here,” a woman told him, asking for an extra flyer for her neighbor. “You’re the first candidate who came. Maybe I have to vote for you now.”

It was 9:07 a.m. on June 9, a sunny Tuesday, 19 days before the Bangkok Metropolitan Council elections on June 28. Sayun, a candidate from the Bangkok Possible group, had already been out since 7 a.m.

Seven days later, on Phraya Suren Road, a different kind of campaign was underway. Surakeat Wangpithak, a 27-year-old People’s Party candidate for the same seat, stood on the back of his own truck, megaphone in hand, as rain pooled in roadside puddles shortly after 4 p.m.

“Sawasdee krub, Khlong Sam Wa. We have an appointment on June 28, at the ballot,” he said. “Let’s change Bangkok. Election day is the day those in power fear the most, because it's the day the voice of the people will be louder than the voice of those in power.”

As families moved out from the city center in search of affordable housing, Khlong Sam Wa’s population and its gated communities grew steadily. Its infrastructure hasn’t kept pace — a pattern seen across Bangkok’s other outer-ring districts.

The district has no electric rail line and is served by just three bus routes — the fewest in Bangkok. It ranks 45th out of 50 districts for public services, according to the Bangkok Index 2025 published by Rocket Media Lab.

Both men are first-time candidates running for one of the council’s 50 seats in Bangkok’s most populous district, home to 216,093 residents as of May 2026. Eight other candidates are running for the same seat.

Soiciety embedded with both campaigns. Each offered a different answer to the same question: How should Bangkok’s fastest-growing edge catch up? One candidate wants to maintain what already exists. The other wants to build what never arrived.

Sayun, a Lak Si resident, retired last year as Khlong Sam Wa’s public works chief after a stint in Phra Nakhon, Bang Phlat, Bang Khun Tien and Bang Kho Laem.

“The issues that residents most need addressed are roads, drainage systems, electricity and related public utilities,” he said. “Repairs are needed, especially for roads that have already been constructed but are damaged or deteriorated.”

As the truck rolled through Soi Baen Chado 5, he narrated the road like a former engineer revisiting an old project.

“When I was at Yotha (public works), I fixed this spot, and now it’s broken again,” he said, pointing toward a stretch of crushed rock and laterite. “This is like this because of the type of rock we used.”

Much of Khlong Sam Wa still relies on unpaved gravel roads, partly because most of the district’s 110 square kilometers remain zoned as a rural and agricultural conservation.

Over the past four years, Khlong Sam Wa received 272.18 million baht from City Hall for road projects, 93% of which went toward improvement and repairs rather than new construction. Denser roads tend to receive priority over smaller outer sois.

The complaints that frustrated Sayun most as a public works official had nothing to do with engineering. 

They are from residents living on private roads that function like public ones — inside housing estates (moobans) or developments where people expect the city to intervene when infrastructure deteriorates.

But Bangkok couldn’t legally do that unless the owner consented.

“I’ve been wondering how these problems can be solved, what we can do,” he said. “It comes down to budgeting and ordinances.”

That, he said, is one reason he decided to run for the council, which is City Hall’s legislative wing.

Having retired, he said a council seat would let him keep serving a district he’d spent years working in — one whose rural character reminded him of his hometown in Loei.

Asked whether such an ordinance already existed, Sayun said no.

It does. The BMC approved the measure, which was published in the Royal Gazette on Feb. 12, and allows the city to maintain certain privately owned infrastructure used by the public under specific conditions.

Asked what he would push for first if elected, Sayun pointed to a public access route near Soi Wat Sud Jai 28, leading toward Waree Phirom Park and a Bangkok-run older adult care facility.

The area is already public land, he said, but remains difficult to access from surrounding neighborhoods. Opening or improving it would create a shortcut for residents visiting the park, instead of forcing everyone to enter from the main Pracha Ruem Chai Road.

“It may seem like a small soi,” he said. “But a lot of people would benefit from it.”

Surakeat made a different case for what Khlong Sam Wa needs.

Along Liap Khlong Song, Phraya Suren and Charoen Pattana roads, evening traffic moved slowly enough that a staffer joked he could hop off the truck, buy skewers from a nearby market and climb back on before clearing the intersection.

Drivers here rolled down car windows to greet the candidate, a contrast to the quieter sois Sayun worked. Surakeat made his case for budget oversight and why it’s important to “make Bangkok orange,” livestreaming on TikTok as he spoke.

Minutes later, the truck sat at a U-turn as traffic stacked up near construction ahead.

To Surakeat, the congestion stems from a district built around cars. Khlong Sam Wa has three bus lines. Ratchathewi, for comparison, has a population of 60,000 and 75 bus lines.

“The minimum transportation cost in Khlong Sam Wa, without buses, is 300-400 baht or more,” he said. “Most people who come to live here, they are forced to buy a car by default.”

Surakeat, a Khlong Sam Wa native, spent three years as a parliamentary assistant and a House education committee advisor — an experience, he said, that taught him how slowly bureaucracy moves.

He pointed to the transit policy: to propose a new bus line, residents must petition the Department of Land Transport, where decision-makers, he said, are blind to Khlong Sam Wa’s daily realities. Meanwhile, City Hall retains the authority to operate its feeder buses.

Surakeat argued that electing national MPs and local councilors from the same party would close that gap, letting the two coordinate national decentralization efforts with immediate local action.

Specifically, he aims to launch two new routes connecting unserved hubs like Rattanapracharak Hospital and Nimit Mai Police Station. 

“The point isn’t really about buses,” he said. “It’s about whether people can trust public services again.”

The two campaigns rely on completely different organizational structures and political scales.

Sayun is running under Bangkok Possible, a group widely seen as being associated with former Gov. Chadchart Sittipunt. Despite repeated denials from both sides, a woman on a bicycle stopped to ask Sayun: “So, you’re Chadchart’s team?”

“No,” he replied. “We’re just a group supporting Chadchart.”

Asked to explain the group’s “independence,” Sayun told Soiciety it doesn’t fund any candidate and that there’s no agreement among the candidates to vote the same way once they reach the council.

His campaign, he said, is entirely self-funded. He hires seven people for 300-400 baht a day. He uses his own trucks to campaign. He pays for his own office rental.

“Among 4-5 (leading candidates), I think we spend the least,” Sayun said. 

Sayun declined to say the exact amount of his campaign costs. The Election Commission capped the campaign spending for the district at 1.15 million baht per candidate.

Surakeat is running under a far larger political banner.

The People’s Party won all 33 of Bangkok’s constituency seats in the 2026 general election, and its orange branding remains among the city’s most recognizable. MPs and party leaders have joined his campaign.

But Surakeat said local voters operate on a different logic.

In national elections, voters often make decisions based on ideology, party affiliation or a desire to choose the prime minister, he said, making it easier for first-time candidates to break through. Local elections are more immediate, focusing on visibility and basic utility.

“People look at who they see the most and who is accessible,” Surakeat said. “It’s not about grand narratives anymore. It comes down to whether the uncollected trash in front of their house will finally be picked up.”

A recent Suan Dusit Poll shows that 35.39% of voters prefer independent candidates for the BMC, while the People’s Party polls at 28.88%.

“The People’s Party, our candidates have district-specific agendas, not just a citywide one,” Surakeat said, arguing his technical data on issues like transit sets him apart from competitors.

Asked about the party’s financial support, Surakeat declined to provide the specifics.

“There’s some support, but I don’t know if I can talk about it. It’s a party matter,” he said, adding he spends more of his own money on the race than the party provides.

Neither candidate expressed absolute certainty about the outcome on June 28.

Sayun described the race as “highly difficult,” citing two former councilors with strong name recognition.

“If I get elected, it may be because of, like I told you, fate,” Sayun said.

Surakeat also acknowledged the challenge, noting that despite his party’s extensive policy preparation, the final decision often comes down to hyper-local expectations like “whether a lightbulb in front of this house will turn on.”

Or it may simply depend on whether someone shows up at all — the same lesson the woman in the soi off Pracha Ruem Chai 57 offered at the start: that showing up still counts for something.

This is the exact type of neighborhood-level reporting Soiciety strives to produce. It requires being on the ground, spending hours and days in deep sois and sitting through the sun and rain to capture the realities of Bangkok’s outer edges.

If you value reporting that goes beyond the city center and into the neighborhoods that rarely make it into Bangkok’s English-language coverage, please become a recurring paying reader ($15/month) to fund this work.