Touring Samut Prakan: Erawan Museum and Muang Boran
Posted by Stuart at 10:17 PM on July 27, 2003I took advantage of my one-day weekend this week by crossing off a few more items on my "Things to See in Thailand" list. Piyawat and I drove to the adjoining province of Samut Prakan to visit Muang Boran (Ancient City) and the Erawan Museum. Both attractions are owned by the same extremely rich Thai-Chinese family and both try to serve as museums and shrines to Thai culture.
We visited Ancient City first. It is a 320 acre park that has several Thai landmarks built on a smaller scale. Included are buildings from Ayutthaya (both models of ruins as well as "this is what we think it looked like" reconstructions), the Grand Palace in Bangkok, various Khmer ruins, and random temples and chedis from around Thailand.
The second attraction that we visited was the Erawan Museum. The museum is a collection of (mostly) Chinese ceramics and is housed in the basement of a building topped with a huge three-headed elephant symbolizing the Hindu god Erawan. Vistors who buy a 150 baht (US$3.50) ticket are welcome to explore the museum and to climb the stairs to the top of the inside of the elephant. At one point you can look out from the 9th floor window in the underside of the elephant's belly.
The Ancient City website has more information about both attractions. My own photos will be posted here soon.
On the way back home, I did what I said I would never do: Drive a car in Bangkok. The car was Piyawat's, a small Honda City (smaller than a Civic and only sold in Asia, I think) that felt absolutely huge in the narrow driving lanes. Motorcycles on all sides, busses taking up half my lane, sitting at traffic lights for 5 minutes and sitting on the right side of the car all added to the fun of my first Bangkok drive.
