SOUTHEAST ASIA 2024—MARCH 18-20, BANGKOK

MARCH 18:  I was admiring the heavy woven cotton textiles used in the draperies and upholstery at Siamotif when our concierge told me the owner is an interior designer who bought the fabrics from Jim Thompson, a design house best known for its silks.  

Lonely Planet recommended a tour of the Jim Thompson House, and after another delicious homemade breakfast at a table overlooking the canal, we called a cab and made our way across town. 

The link above has a comprehensive description of the house, paraphrased here: 

The Jim Thompson House is a beautiful traditional Thai house standing at the end of a quiet soi [lane] by the Saan Saab Canal.  The house consists of six authentic Thai houses interconnected seamlessly to appear as a large elevated house set in a lush garden.

Some of the houses were acquired from as far as Ayudhya and transported to Bangkok. The house making up the living room is 175 years old, the oldest house and the other houses are 75 – 150 years old.  These houses were skillfully reassembled by Thai craftsmen in the traditional Thai architecture and décor.  No nails were used, only wooden joints and pegs, a standard feature in the traditional Thai house.  The construction of this masterpiece took 11 months to complete. 

 

The houses are designed broader at the base and tapering to the top. The same feature is manifested in the doors and windows.  This tapered structure adds to the stability of the house and also to ventilation, as cool air is drawn in and hot air channeled upwards and out through the vents at the top of the walls.

A luxuriant Thai garden weaves its way around the house, making it virtually a jungle maze. Jim Thompson fondly referred to the garden in his house as the "jungle."  The thick foliage interspersed between the wings of the house, almost obscures parts of the house from view, giving the place a cool and peaceful atmosphere. 

The Jim Thompson House is a repository of antiques and Thai handicraft.  Buddha statues ranging from 8th to 13th and 14th centuries, Chinese ceramics, Thai paintings and other antiques can be seen on display in almost every room and recess in the house.

 

 

As interesting as the house is, its American owner-architect-spook-entrepreneur is even more intriguing.  This link details his patrician and tragic biography, but here are the high points.

During World War II, Jim Thompson (above) served as an officer in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA.  After a stint as the OSS station chief in Bangkok and a brief return to the US, he moved permanently to Bangkok in 1946.  He became interested in the silk industry, which was in serious decline after the war.  In his travels through his adopted city, Thompson found a community of Cham Muslim silk weavers living near the Saan Saab Canal.  He persuaded them to weave some Thai silk samples for him, and in 1947, he brought the completed samples to America, where he convinced Vogue to publish an article on Thai silk, which took the fashion world by storm.

A year later, Thompson established the Thai Silk Company and the industry recommenced in earnest.  Unfortunately, Thompson’s success was short-lived, ending with his unsolved disappearance in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia on Easter Sunday in 1967.  Per the link above:

In 1967, Thompson went for a holiday in the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia.

While he was out on a jungle walk, he vanished without a trace and all efforts to find him were in vain. His disappearance remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

In the aftermath of his disappearance, many theories were advanced to explain the circumstances of his disappearance. His former connections with the OSS fueled further conspiracy theories.

Adding to the conspiracy theories, Thompson’s sister was brutally murdered in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a month after his disappearance.  

After the tour we decided to visit the Jim Thompson Bangkok Showroom to see if the chairs we liked so much at Siamotif were available.

Sadly, the refined motifs and sophisticated tones Thompson so loved have been replaced by a cacophony of color and Versace-esque designs.  Even sadder, the chairs were not available.  We learned later from the owner at Siamotif that the chairs had been custom made for her years ago in northern Thailand, and that the company was now out of business.  But the trip to the showroom was not a total loss, as we found a great place for ramen for lunch.

Before dinner, we stopped for a smoke by the canal behind our hotel, where there was (of course) a neighborhood spirit house

and (surprisingly) a towering statuary grouping of Buddha, his angelic attendants, and his protective dragon.  

We learned later that this ceramic pile was related to Wat Sri Sudaram, a temple complex next to our hotel that we passed by daily.  The bench by the canal under the watchful (but non-judgmental) eye of the Stoner Buddha was a favorite spot for an attitude adjustment. 

On our way to the restaurant we’d chosen in Talat Noi, we walked down a street whose sidewalk was piled high with automotive parts.  Just another weird and wonderful WTF!? sight in Bangkok.

MARCH 19:  This was our day to visit the Big Buddha we’d seen looming over Bangkok from the elevated metro on our way back from the MBK Mall earlier in the week.  One look at all that golden bronze and my husband just had to go there. 

We started off with small-bore Buddha-ing at Wat Sri Sudaram, next to our hotel.  The temple complex is dedicated to the Thai poet laureate Sunthorn Phu (1786-1855), who studied there as a boy and was accorded the honor of World Poet by UNESCO in 1986.  For more details, see this link; here are some images.

Next up was Wat Paknam, home of the Big Buddha himself.  It turns out that there are two attractions here:  the stupa (a bell-like structure usually containing a relic or remains, shown as the white building in the aerial photo above) and the Buddha.  Wiki lays it out quite well.  First, the complex and the stupa:

Wat Paknam is a 32,000 square metres (7.9 acres) temple complex, with a large number of buildings. The temple's grounds are shaped like an island, surrounded by canals.

In 2004, Somdet Chuang [the supreme patriarch of Thailand, who died in 2021 at age 96] took the initiative to start building a huge stupa at the temple,…The name means 'a blessed, great land', and refers to Thailand under the reign of the Royal Family,  to which the stupa has been dedicated [seen below is the playboy prince in Ray-bans!  Donny, Jr., here's your dynastic competition.]. 

The 80 meters (260 ft) high stupa has a twelve-sided polygon shape with five floors in it, including another 8-meter glass stupa, a room with relics, Buddha images and images of respected monks,...

 

The structure also contains a meditation hall, a museum, a parking lot, and a lift. The halls within the stupa have been decorated with paintings depicting Buddhist cosmology, … The stupa was finished in 2012, costing a total of 500 million baht. It was officially opened by then Princess Srirasmi. After the stupa was finished, Wat Paknam has become a popular attraction for international tourists.

As to the Buddha:

On March 4, 2017, Wat Paknam began building a Buddha image in honor of … the Thai Royal Family. [T]he image is 69 meters (226 ft) tall and 40 meters (130 ft) wide, and is located before the stupa. The image is made in meditation posture and is based on the Buddha image as used in the meditation method…. According to a spokesperson of the temple, the material the image is made of is pure bronze, making the image the first of its kind in the world.

The construction is a cooperation between Thai and Chinese construction technicians. It was finished with the placing of a relic and gold in the lotus bud on the head of the Buddha, and a structure of gold as a "heart" in the left side of the chest.

The image was expected to be finished in mid 2020, but was delayed in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand. The statue was completed in 2021 and stands tall over the city, easily visible from the BTS [the metro system]. Temple officials have stated that the statue has doubled the number of visitors to Wat Paknam.

Having had our fill of Big Buddha, we grabbed a tuk-tuk to Chinatown and Wat Traimit Witthayaram, a Theraveda Buddhist temple built around 1824-1851, mostly rebuilt in the 1930s-1940s, and originally named Wat Sam Chin Tai for the three Chinese friends who founded it.    

According to Wiki,

A plaster Buddha statue had been moved to the temple from the abandoned Wat Phraya Krai in 1935. In 1955, during a ceremony to move statue to the newly built vihara building, it was accidentally dropped, cracking the plaster and revealing a gold statue hidden beneath.

We climbed up the staircase, removed our shoes under a covered area, and then entered the temple.  It was a study in amethyst with the golden Buddha seated in a niche guarded by what looked like a very scary pair of ivory hands with seven fingers formed from snakes with gaping mouths filled with sharp teeth.  "Don't even think about it!" seemed to be the message. 

 

Lest we stir the snakes, we left in search of street food for lunch.  A few blocks away, a trio of aunties had set up a cooking stall on the corner in front of what seemed to be an open-air hardware store.  

The food was standard issue, super tasty Thai, 

but the dude lying down on a bench under a street tree and playing with his smart phone while wedged between an old tire, a framed monk, and some porcelain tchotchkes at one end and a large ceramic container filled with plastic recycling at the other end was something you don’t see every day.   

And that’s the point of travel, isn’t it?

My husband returned to the hotel. I took the metro to the Jim Thompson Outlet where I bought a gift for the Berlin neighbors who had been so helpful in our trip planning.  

Back at Siamotif, I snapped this image of the hotel’s garden shrine before we went out to our last dinner in Bangkok.

MARCH 20:  Last day!  I was on a mission before we had to leave for our flight to Phuket.  We wanted to buy a household shrine.  We had seen a smallish, tacky one with a pair of flame-shaped red light bulbs that would be perfect for Berlin--if it would fit in a box that we could take on the plane.  I took the alley in front of Siamotif that led to Bang Khun Non Road, where the store that sold household shrines, among a thousand other things, was located.  The alley was decorated with laundry and motor bikes; enlivened by Thai music, barking dogs, and chirping canaries; and peopled with locals just hanging out.  In other words, business as usual.  

I found the shrine we wanted, and the nice man who owned the shop looked everywhere to find a box that would fit.  But nothing worked.  Probably just as well not to import blasphemy into our home.  

On my return, I took the lane through Wat Sri Sudaram and couldn't resist photographing these oddities.  

I love Bangkok!  Wish I could say the same for Phuket, but that's another story and the last one in this Southeast Asia 2024 trip diary.

Keep it real!

Marilyn