August 13
Question: When does a 20 minute trip take 60 minutes?
Answer: When you don’t know how to speak Thai, the Thais don’t know how to speak English, and no one can read the tourist
map!
Steve and I headed out for the Jim Thompson House and Museum which isn’t far off the BTS (Bangkok Transit System) sky train. We got off at the right stop then asked for help. We were sent in the opposite direction
from where we were supposed to be going. We ended up at the end of an alley in a hotel parking lot and the guards there tried to help – they even called another person over. All three of them were standing over the map and pointing in all
different directions then they finally decided to send us east. We followed their pointing and ended up in another alley. We stopped a young man who was getting on his motorcycle. He took out his smart phone and pointed us the right direction.
Finally a cab driver (who must have been watching all of this) stopped to ask if we wanted a ride. I told him where we wanted to go and he said he knew the location. I asked him how much the ride would be and he said 100 bhat. I said no.
I told him I would pay 50 bhat and he accepted. That is how we finally got to the Jim Thompson House and Museum. On a positive note we got a lot of exercise.
If you don’t know who Jim Thompson was don’t worry.
Steve and I had no clue who he was. He was born in the United States in 1906. He studied to become an architect and then joined the military (intelligence). When he retired he started a successful silk industry in Thailand. He went
missing in 1967 and has never been found. We did learn during the guided tour that when he settled in Bangkok he had his fortune read and was told that something would happen to him when he was 61 years old (that fortune was framed and on the wall in
his house). That was the age at which he went missing.
Jim Thompson’s house was filled with very valuable artifacts from Thailand, China and Burma. There were stone and wooden Buddhas, porcelain tea sets and huge pots.
There was a demonstration by someone who was drawing silk threads out of a cocoon.
Despite the misguided way in which we got there, today’s trip was worth it. Once we finished the tour we ate great food in the there and then
successfully made our way back to the sky train to go back to Sukhamvit Soi 22. When we got off the train we stopped to pick up dessert – fresh mango with sticky rice and coconut milk (truly delicious)!