Next we decided to learn a little bit about Thai culture and we visited Jim Thomson’s house. Jim was an American from Delaware who came over to Thailand while serving in the war and fell madly in love with it. Who cares, right? He clearly wasn’t the only one. But he was the most famous American in Asia as he single-handedly revived the Thai silk trade of hand-weaving silk in the 50s and 60s and this brought thousands of people out of poverty. The Thais love him for it.
What was interesting for us, was that he was a trained architect and he built his own special traditional Thai style house using parts of old Thai country houses. Here he stored lots of treasures he had picked up throughout his life in Asia. When he mysteriously disappeared on holiday in the Malaysian highlands this became a museum you can visit and learn about Thai culture.
We had a tour from a very animated young lady who finished each sentence with an appreciation of her own information. She appeared to be enjoying herself much more than the visitors. “Jim made this home out of 6 Thai houses, very interestiiiiing”, “look at this Ming cat, very cuuuuuute”, “he used this to keep out the rain, very cleveeeeeer”. She also prohibited us from taking photos (which obviously didn’t stop us rebels #badgirlsforlife), and told us shamelessly it’s because we have to spend money on postcards. Not sure if that one was supposed to be Thai humour but she really needed to work on her delivery.
Most of the old school Thai houses are elevated off the ground as traditionally, residents always lived on the first floor, while the ground floor was left for chickens and other animals. This also helped protect houses from flooding during rainy season (not sure what happened to the chickens then :S). The doorways also all had really elevated thresholds to provide comic relief when stupid tourists tripped up on their way in…ok that’s not the official reason…although that seemed to be a common occurrence in Jim’s museum. The reason was actually to keep evil spirits from entering the home (as everyone knows evil spirits don’t have legs they only crawl along the floor). It was also designed to keep babies in and stop them from falling to their deaths amongst the drowning chickens below.
Not too dissimilar from Bosnian traditions, everyone takes their shoes off when entering the house and they didn’t have beds for a long time so people slept on the floor. Can you imagine living all year long with no shoes, in gap ya trousers and sleeping wherever you want?! Sounds like heaven.
Jim also had some very pretty and interesting artefacts on display, including a significant collection of Buddhas. A lot of the Buddhas were broken, i.e. with an arm/finger/shoulder etc. missing. Thai people are very superstitious and believe that broken Buddhas are bad luck, so whenever someone broke their Buddha they would bring it to Jim to add to his collection. When Jim went missing under mysterious circumstances never to be seen again, the Thai people were saddened but not surprised – anyone collecting broken Buddhas was asking for trouble.
Something even freakier was two horoscopes that Jim had framed that were hanging in the wall of one of his rooms. An experienced astrologer had predicted him a good year in 1959 (the year he moved into this amazing house), and bad luck at the age of 61. Guess how old he was when he went missing?! [queue X files intro music]. Jim’s body was never discovered although westerners generally believe he was done by the CIA (he was an ex-soldier who spoke out a lot against the Vietnam war), or got in trouble with fellow Thai traders who were jealous of his success. Thais believe he was eaten by a tiger 🙂
Jim’s house gave us a flavour of traditional Thailand and this was enough culture for one day. Now it was time for some more shopping but of a different kind. My mum had been on the phone to her contacts in the Philippines and she had gotten all the insider information. We Grabbed ourselves to the Platinum fashion mall- a 6-story mall across three buildings; like an Asian Westfields on coke. This was nothing for my mother, and with the skill of a wild animal sniffing out its prey it took her all of 30 seconds to locate the handbag zone. Once we got there it took her about 5 minutes to purchase herself a bag.
I, on the other hand, was in the shoe section trying to get my big fat giant feet to fit into some sexy Thai boots (relatively big of course- I’m a size 37 which is smaller than the European average). Like an ugly sister trying to squeeze into Cinderella’s slipper, at one point I had two Thai ladies helping me try to shove my feet into the largest size of boot they had- one holding the boot and one pushing my leg in. They were desperate to sell and I was desperate not to embarrass myself with my ogre feet. Luckily it worked and I even purchased some nice Thai stripper heels to boost my self-esteem.
The self-esteem took another blow after a quick dinner (a noodle soup which was too spicy to eat again) as we made our way to get a proper full body massage. Remember we are still on day one here so massage number two was within less than 24 hours of our arrival in Bangkok. The insult was found in the massage room where we were told to shower and put on disposable panties (disposable granny panties – not as exciting as they sound). The disposable panties were discreetly left on the bed but nothing could disguise the massive letters “XL” on the middle of the packaging. XL?! Come on, I mean I know I’m carrying a few extra kilos but seriously my butt is not that big. This time the massage was an hour and a half and both my mum and I dozed off a number of times…
When we finally got to the hotel around midnight my mum decided she wanted to go for cocktails. Now this was a very, very rare occurrence that my mum was convincing me to go drinking but by now we had been awake for around 42 hours. We were staying in the hangover hotel with its infamous dome and one of the best rooftop bars in Bangkok. We donned our heels and took to the 64th floor. But all the enthusiasm in the world wouldn’t change the fact that my mum is a massive lightweight (the black sheep in the family of alcoholics) so with each sip of her mojito she would move further and further down into the sofa until about 5 sips later she was actually passed out lying horizontally on the bed (I’m not even exaggerating her glass actually got full as the ice melted). I think it was finally bedtime at the end of one long and crazy first day in Bangkok city.
