Culture and a Conman...

Bangkok, Day 17

So today, we decided to be a bit more cultural and in addition to doing yet ANOTHER shopping mall and if anyone knows me - they will know that I actually detest shopping with a passion but I adore architecture and these malls are just mind blowing in scale and concept etc. so I love to walk through and admire them. Anyway, I digress. We have already covered both the Siam Paragon and the Siam Discovery buildings, but we hadn't done the Siam Square One building, so that was on our hit list.

6 Dec 2024

Siam Square One

Ok, so just to cut to the chase - don't bother with this one. Siam Square One is an old-style and open-air (i.e. no air conditioning in the general areas) mall, and it was very quiet and empty of people when we went (everyone is probably at all the other better malls). We didn't like this one very much at all, but we did walk all the floors just in case it got better - it didn't. In fact, at one point, I said to R that it reminded me of some sort of Star Wars space docking station, as some of the external areas were all concrete and sort of space-like looking.

Lunch

As we were so close to MBK shopping mall, we decided to pop into here for our food and I had a really tasty crab noodle dish and R had a wanton and pork soup dish which he enjoyed.

Now I should say that MBK is not a fancy mall, it's the shopping centre that is known for selling counterfeit goods from all the premium designer brands. Again, I am not into designer items, so this held no interest for me, but it was mobbed with folks buying all sorts of fake stuff - you name it, and it was there. I'm not actually sure how this is allowed, but it goes on. Actually, I tell a lie and R bought 2 'Nike' t-shirts for 400 baht (£9.25) as he was getting fed up washing his preferred Under Armour t-shirt (which is very light and good in the heat) every night. Again, the escalators in this shopping mall give R the "heebie jeebies" as you can see right down the whole building, and goodness knows what this must be like for anyone who suffers from 'intrusive thoughts'.

Jim Thompson House Museum

Not far from the MBK shopping mall and close to the National Stadium is the Jim Thompson House Museum and the Jim Thompson Art Centre. The house museum is not a huge place but it is worth a visit and we really enjoyed our time here (we didn't go to the Art Centre, so we cannot comment on that). The cost of entry was 200 Bhat (£4.63) each and that included a guided tour of his main house.

Jim Thompson was an American businessman who helped revitalise the Thai silk industry in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time of his disappearance, he was one of the most famous Americans living in Asia. Time magazine claimed he "almost singlehanded saved Thailand's vital silk industry from extinction". He disappeared in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands on 26 March 1967. The mysterious circumstances surrounding the case created a significant amount of media coverage.

Following his relocation to Bangkok and the establishment of the Thai Silk Company Ltd. in 1948, Thompson also became a major collector of Southeast Asian art. He collected secular art not only from Thailand but from Burma, Cambodia, and Laos, frequently travelling to those countries on buying trips. His collection also consisted of white and blue porcelain from China, which made its way into Thailand around the 16th and 17th centuries.

In 1958, he began what was to be the pinnacle of his architectural achievement, a new home to live in and to showcase his art collection. The museum was planned to consist of a complex combination of six traditional Thai-style houses, primarily constructed of wood, and various old Thai structures that were collected from all parts of Thailand in the 1950s and 1960s.

His home sits on a khlong (canal) Saen Saep across from Bangkrua, where his company's weavers were then located. Most of the 19th-century houses were dismantled and moved from Ayutthaya, but the largest, a weaver's house (now the living room), came from Bangkrua. Built in 1959, the house and museum spans approximately half an acre or 2023.43 square meters) and quite sad to think that he only got to enjoy his masterpiece and art collection for 7 years.

The gardens and grounds are just gorgeous! I especially loved the lily ponds and the Koi carp fish swimming about - just stunning.

After the tour finished, we had a refreshment break and just admired the beautiful serene surroundings in midst of a busy and bustling city for a little while before we once again entered the busy Bangkok streets to make our way home.

A nice Thai man...

As we were heading back from the museum, we had to pass a Thai gentleman on his motor bike and like a lot of Thai people, they greeted us with the Thai "hello" greeting of "sawdee krap". So we are quite familiar with this greeting (i.e. hello and thank you are pretty much our only Thai!). Then he asks if we are American and if we have come from the Jim Thompson museum? His English is very good, and once he realises we are Scottish, he engages in some more pleasantries with us, asking us about Rangers and Celtic football teams. He tells us he is waiting to get some food for his wife from the nearby restaurant (due to open) and that if we want to get some good shopping bargains at much, much better prices than those of the museum shop, we should go to a place very close by as it is a 'government owned place for exports and they have a big discount sale on for the holiday". We thank him and I say to R, "should we just go and have a look as it's so close by?". So we head off to this place, and we just get onto the street when another guy approaches us about the export shopping place. At this point, we realise that we are being sent to a scam place and we about turn and head back home.

Later in the evening, I am looking online and sure enough there is a gem scam where tourists are encouraged to buy heavily discounted gems only to later discover that they are not worth the money they paid for them. So this is now the third time we have been approached by very friendly local Thai men, offering some helpful advice to us obvious glakkit tourists....

Bangkok, Thailand