His house is spectacular. He combined six teak buildings that he thought represented traditional Thai architecture in order to make his large home. The whole thing, like traditional Thai homes, is on stilts to avoid any floods. He moved into his new house in 1959. His house is right on the canal and directly across the water is the village where the silk fabrics were made, some still are. Then, in 1967, Jim Thompson visited the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia (where we are going the day after Christmas) and disappeared while on a hike. He has never been found and there are no clues to what happened to him.
His nephew inherited his house and turned it into a museum. The only way to see it is through a guided tour that lasts about 30 minutes. The girls made it almost all the way through the tour. Wyatt did not last very long though. Most of the pictures are from the garden.
A really cool demonstration was happening at the entrance. They had silk in its different forms and you could touch it, shake it, and so on.
There was a man who was boiling the silk cocoons and then using a wooden tool to get the silk into a long string of silk yarn. Pretty cool to watch, mesmerizing.
Here are some pictures from the lovely garden.
There is actually a fish in this big pot. He and Zoe are checking each other out.
One of the men who work here showed the kids how to stick their hand in the top of the pot and wiggle and splash it a little in order to get the fish's attention.
These little wats can be found at houses everywhere in Bangkok. They are meant for the spirits and are placed in the Northeast corner (I think that's right) of the property so that shadows never fall on them.
Here is the whole family sitting on the steps to the living room.
Inside the mall it was at least very cool. The food court was incredibly disappointing. Not only were there many, many, many cockroaches crawling around the floor, even some of the counters, it was sort of pricey for mall food. And not very good. And I still can't believe we decided to eat it instead of walking away. We thought it was weird that a mall food court was recommended, so we really should have known better. Ah well, next meal will be better. And cheaper.
The rest of the pictures are from our hotel, the Presidential Park in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok. It was very nice. The rooms were not brand new, modern, and sleek but they were nice, well-equipped, and very clean. Oh, and they upgraded us so our room was huge. We had a large separate master bedroom, a very big bathroom with separate shower and bath (and view), a dining room, living room with sofa bed and cot, and a kitchen. We also had an enormous balcony with a pretty view.
And bathrobes and slippers!
We also enjoyed a free breakfast buffet every morning. Love it.
The hotel is attached to some serviced apartment towers so we had a couple of pools, a playground, and some sitting areas to enjoy on the 6th floor. You could not hear any of the city sounds here.
Dance party on the balcony!
Everywhere in Bangkok, the Thai people were so friendly to our children. The kids loved going to the lobby because they would get so much attention. It was very sweet.
We don't have a bathtub at our apartment in Singapore so we loved having one at our hotel in Bangkok.
We had to wash the city of us so we could get back out the next day to see where the king lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment