Museum sights in Bangkok
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Siam Society & Ban Kamthieng
Stepping off cacophonous Soi Asoke and into the Siam Society’s Ban Kamthieng house museum is as close to a northern Thai village as you’ll come in Bangkok. Ban Kamthieng is a traditional 19th-century home that was located on the banks of Mae Ping in Chiang Mai. Now relocated to Bangkok, the house presents the daily customs and spiritual beliefs of the Lanna tradition. Communicating all the hard facts as well as any sterile museum (with detailed English signage and engaging video installations), Ban Kamthieng instils in the visitor a sense of place, from the attached rice granary and handmade tools to the wooden loom and woven silks. You can’t escape the noise of Bangkok…
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Forensic Medicine Museum
While it’s not exactly CSI, pickled body parts, ingenious murder weapons and other crime-scene evidence are on display at this medical museum, intended to educate rather than nauseate. Among the grisly displays is a bloodied T-shirt from a victim stabbed to death with a dildo, and the preserved but rather withered cadaver of Si Ouey, one of Thailand’s most prolific and notorious serial killers who murdered – and then ate – more than 30 children in the 1950s. Despite being well and truly dead (he was executed), today his name is still used to scare misbehaving children into submission: ‘Behave yourself or Si Ouey will come for you’. There are another five dusty museums on …
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Bangkok Doll Factory & Museum
It’s no exaggeration to say the dolls crafted in this modest workshop have become the template for dolls sold in countless tourist stores across Thailand. The workshop was founded by Khunying Tongkorn Chandevimol in 1956 after she completed a doll-making course while living in Japan. Upon her return to Thailand, she began researching and making dolls, drawing from Thai mythology and historical periods. Her dolls, often in Thai hill-tribe and rural costumes, have won several international awards. Today her personal collection includes 400 dolls from around the world, plus important pieces from her own workshop, where you can watch the figures being crafted by hand. The mus…
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Royal Barges National Museum
The royal barges are slender, fantastically ornamented vessels used in ceremonial processions along the river. The tradition dates back to the Ayuthaya era, when most travel (for commoners and royalty) was by boat. Today the royal barge procession is an infrequent occurrence, most recently performed in 2006 in honour of the 60th anniversary of the king's ascension to the throne. When not in use, the barges are on display at this Thonburi museum.
Suphannahong, the king's personal barge, is the most important of the boats. Made from a single piece of timber, it's the largest dugout in the world. The name means 'Golden Swan', and a huge swan head has been carved into the bow.…
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Museum of Siam
This fun new museum employs a variety of media to explore the origins of the Thai people and their culture. Housed in a European-style 19th-century building that was once the Ministry of Commerce, the exhibits are presented in an engaging, interactive fashion not often found in Thailand. They are also refreshingly balanced and entertaining, with galleries dealing with a range of questions about the origins of the nation and its people. Each room has an informative narrated video started by a sensory detector, keeping waiting to a minimum. An Ayuthaya-era battle game, a room full of traditional Thai toys and a street vending cart where you can be photographed pretending to…
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Bangkokian Museum
This collection of three wooden houses illustrates an often-overlooked period of Bangkok’s history, the 1950s and ’60s. The main building was built in 1937 as a home for the Surawadee family and, as the signs inform us, was finished by Chinese carpenters on time and for less than the budgeted 2400B (which would barely buy a door handle today). This building and the large wooden one to the right, which was added as a boarding house to help cover costs, are filled with the detritus of post-war family life and offer a fascinating window into the period. The third building, at the back of the block, was built in 1929 as a surgery for a British doctor, though he died soon afte…
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National Gallery
The humble National Gallery belies the country's impressive tradition of fine arts. Decorating the walls of this early Ratanakosin-era building are works of contemporary art, mostly by artists who receive government support. The permanent exhibition is rather dated and dusty, but the temporary exhibitions, held in spacious halls out back, can be good.
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King Prajadhipok Museum
A visit to a royal museum might sound like a royal bore, but this collection uses modern techniques to relate the rather dramatic life of Rama VII (King Prajadhipok; r 1925–35), while neatly documenting Thailand’s transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy. The museum occupies a grand neocolonial-style building constructed on the orders of Rama V for his favourite firm of Bond St merchants; it was the only foreign business allowed on the royal road linking Bangkok’s two palace districts.
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National Museum
Often touted as Southeast Asia's biggest museum, the National Museum is home to an impressive collection of religious sculpture, best appreciated on one the museum's twice-weekly guided tours .
Most of the museum's structures were built in 1782 as the palace of Rama I's viceroy, Prince Wang Na. Rama V turned it into a museum in 1874, and the current museum consists of three permanent exhibitions spread out over several buildings.
The history wing has made impressive bounds towards mainstream curatorial aesthetics with a succinct chronology of prehistoric, Sukhothai-, Ayuthaya- and Bangkok-era events and figures. Gems include King Ramakamhaeng's inscribed stone pillar, sai…
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Lettuce Farm Palace
An overlooked treasure, Lettuce Farm Palace near Th Ratchaprarop is a collection of five traditional wooden Thai houses that was once the residence of Princess Chumbon of Nakhon Sawan and before that a lettuce farm – hence the name. Within the stilt buildings are displays of art, antiques and furnishings, and the landscaped grounds are a peaceful oasis complete with ducks, swans and a semi-enclosed garden.
reviewed
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Wang Suan Phakkat
Wang Suan Phakkat (Lettuce Farm Palace) is a noteworthy traditional Thai house-museum. Once the residence of Princess Chumbon of Nakhon Sawan, the museum is a collection of five traditional wooden Thai houses linked by elevated walkways containing varied displays of art, antiques and furnishings. The landscaped grounds are a peaceful oasis complete with ducks, swans and a semi-enclosed, Japanese-style garden.
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Children’s Discovery Museum
Through hands-on activities, learning is well-disguised as fun at this museum opposite Chatuchak Weekend Market. Kids can stand inside a bubble, see how an engine works, role-play as a firefighter or jump into the music room to play on traditional instruments. Most activities are geared to primary school age. There is also a toddlers’ playground at the back of the main building.
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Corrections Museum
On the far side of the Rommaninat Park is the Corrections Museum, a rehabilitated colonial building covering the park’s former career as a prison in the early 1900s. Most displays are in Thai but the maintenance staff and other hangers-on turn the tour into a social event, giggling at the gruesome displays of torture used in the good old days.
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Royal Thai Elephant Museum
Thais consider albinism auspicious, so all white elephants are considered royal property (Rama IX keeps one at his palace). Dusit Palace had two stables for keeping white elephants and this museum remembers these lucky creatures with displays explaining the ranks of elephants and their important role in Thai society.
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Queen’s Gallery
This royal-funded museum presents five floors of rotating exhibitions of modern and traditionally influenced art. The building is sleek and contemporary and the artists hail from the upper echelons of the conservative Thai art world. The attached shop is filled with fine-arts books and gifts.
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Ancient Cloth Museum
If you're interested in fashion, you should enjoy a poke around this museum, with its well- annotated collection of royal cloth and royals wearing cloth (Queen Sirikit looks a bit groovy in the old B&W photos).
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