On my last full day I made it to two destinations: the Jim Thompson house, and Wat Arun, a temple on the river.
The Jim Thompson house was the house of one Jim Thompson, an american who settled in Bangkok after the second world war. He apparently became interested in the history of Thai silk making, and the further production of cloth from that silk. He was apparently instrumental in re-starting production of silk, and of silk products, using craft workers in Bangkok. In the following years (basically, the 1950s) he built himself a house near the location of his workers, and lived there. The house is actually made up of several old teak-built wooden houses, brought to the site from other parts of Thailand, altered, and put together to form a new and quite large structure. It’s located not far from the overhead railway so I was able to get there easily.
I had been looking forward to the visit – the Jim Thompson house is highlighted in many guide books – but I was disappointed when I discovered that it takes the form of a guided tour of the house lasting maybe 40 minutes or so. There’s no opportunity to explore or indeed to revisit any rooms that you’ve already passed through. I suppose that’s unavoidable; there were a lot of visitors, and while the house is a good size it’s still a domestic house, so it would be impractical to have people wandering around in all directions. (At least with a guided tour all the visitors are moving in the same direction….) It’s also the case that the house is furnished and decorated, and on the walls are many apparently rare and certainly beautiful Thai objects, and again with a guided tour visitors are under the eye of a guide all the time. More disappointingly, photography of the house interior is not permitted.
So this was not the experience I’d been looking forward to. The house itself is characterful and attractive, and the objects on display are beautiful and fascinating; I would have loved to be able to explore at my leisure – but not so. In fact, on the way out I think I found the actual point of the place – a Retail Opportunity! There is a Jim Thompson Foundation shop, in which various items made from Thai silk can be purchased – at a price. For example, over-the-shoulder tote bags started at just above 4,000 Thai Baht, and went up from there. At just about 40 Baht to £1, that’s a starting price of £100. To be fair, there were cheaper items, e.g. scarves and silk squares, but it was the bags that caught my eye – they were beautiful. Anyway, here’s a link to their website to give you a feel for the full range of their goods, and the prices (in €).
During the afternoon I visited Wat Arun, a Buddhist temple on the river. It takes the form of a Stupa – a sort of tower, with various outlying sub-towers. You can climb so far up it but not all the way – which I was glad of, as the steps are steep and in places a bit dilapidated. This was interesting and dramatic, but very, very hot – this was mid afternoon, the sun was out, and there were quite large crowds. The queue on the pier for the tourist boat back was especially hot, but while it was uncomfortable there were no real problems. Once I was on the boat things improved a lot – indeed, it was on this boat ride that I took a lot of images in the previous post.
In the middle of the day – i.e. between the Jim Thompson House and Wat Arun – I made an impromptu visit to an arts centre in the middle of Bangkok, and in many ways that was the best part of the day. I found a photo exhibition by a member of the Thai royal family – images taken on her travels in 2018. (I have a feeling that this is an annual exhibition; after all, who in Thailand is going to say ‘No’ to a Princess?) The quality of the images was varied, but all were attractive. The internal architecture of the building was stunning – it was on about 9 floors with a huge open atrium – and it had cafes, etc, on the first couple of floors. So this was where I had my lunch that day, in lovely air-conditioned coolness! So all in all, not quite as good a day as the previous two. But I still enjoyed the river boat ride and the Arts centre, and although the visit to Wat Arun was hot, the architecture was stunning.
And that was my visit to Bangkok! I was up before 5am the following morning in order to get to the airport for a 9 o’clock flight to Dubai. Once I was there I embarked on P&O’s Oceana for a 10-night cruise around the persian Gulf, and you can find a summary post from that, and links to detailed posts, in my Cruise blog, here.