This morning, Aina wanted to go to the Kids Club again. She met a friend and liked it there. She said, everyone in the club was very friendly… and she liked playing virtual video games, like WII and stuff. So, we had our breakfast together at the usual place, and she left right after breakfast.
Since I got another me-time, I decided to join Yana and her family to check out the Jim Thompson House, which had been converted into a museum. The late Jim Thompson is very famous in Bangkok. He’s an American entrepreneur who made Thai silk famous around the world.
So, I took the BTS to the National Stadium Station, which was only one station away from Siam, and walked to the famous house. This was my first time taking the BTS, and I was honestly impressed. It was very easy to take (very similar to Singapore’s MRT) and it was so clean and shiny.
When I got to the Jim Thompson House, Yana and her family were already there. We, the visitors, could only enter the house by joining a guided tour. And once we entered the house, we were not allowed to take any pictures. But we could take as many pictures as we wanted at the courtyard outside the house. There was a guy extracting the silk from the cocoon, which was kinda interesting to see… You could see the silk thread winding out of the cocoon on the pot… So neat!
There were also dancers in the courtyard…
Even though it was a weekday, the place was kinda packed with tourists. And since we could only enter the house by the guided tour, we had to wait for our turn to get a guide.
Luckyly, our tour guide was this funny woman, who liked to tease the tour members… So, even though the venue was packed and sometimes there was a tour jam and we had to wait longer to enter the next room, the tour was interesting and entertaining.
The house itself was beautifully decorated. According to our tour guide, the house comprised of 6 traditional stilt-house brought straight from Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand. Each house served as 1 room, and joined together in a very seamless way. The living room was the only one that’s not a stilt house. It’s the 7th house and was the largest house in the complex.
The house was decorated with antiques and relics from all over Southeast Asia. Mr. Thompson had quite a collection! From delicate China porcelain, all kinds of potty container to a traditional toy labyrinth for your pet mouse… And they all had some stories attached to it.
Like below, it’s a large wooden print tile of fish that was used to decorate the Thai silk… (and that’s our tour guide!).
At the end of the tour, they gave out small origami stuff for kids… Since Aina didn’t come, I picked up a Pikachuu for her.
After the tour, we visited the gift shop that sold all the Jim Thompson’s silk. It’s pretty much selling the same thing as the store in Siam Paragon that we passed by everyday while we were there.
It was almost 1PM when we finished, and it was time for me to pick up Aina from the Kids Club. I took the Museum’s golf cart service (it’s free!) from the Museum to the main road, so the walk to the BTS station was short.
I took the train back to the hotel and met up with Aina for lunch and Aquarium… But that’s on the next entry 🙂
The rest of the photos of this trip is in Bangkok 2016 photo album at Flickr. Other entries of this trip is at Bangkok 2016.
