After the Emerald Buddha, we went walking in search of the next temple on the list. One recommended by Chai, our driver from yesterday.
I’m gonna take a moment to add Chai to my Shenagster list. I know we paid him, but he really did make the day. Smooth rides, good advice, great overall experience and he tolerated our antics. He has a kid he could have spent the day with, but he chose to be part of our day instead, and I was humbled by that.
So, sorry Chai. Welcome to the club.
Again, we missed Chai today. I thought that many times when we were walking around.
But without walking we would have never wandered past this… completely random Military Museum.
First we noticed this guy. Not clear what he was pointing at, but an odd place to have a statue in uniform given we were in a residential area.
I asked. MJ didn’t know. We found a sign.
The gate was open. No one stopped us. I decided we could say we were looking for their ‘E,’ but that would raise more questions than answers, so we went in the gate. And encountered this:
What may not be clear in this picture, and I am sorry that it is not, is that this excited barefoot man with his equally excited son (?) is in fact holding a single flip flop.
Inside a ‘historical l arning center’ with a military theme.
It was a puzzling sight which invited more questions than answers.
So we kept looking around, and not finding any equally perplexing out of theme statues in the ‘garden,’ we moved our attention to the building.
Neither of us read Thai, but through google translate, we determined we could go inside.
No one was there to guide us, suggest information or demand payment, so we wandered randomly through the building.
It was an odd, yet on theme collection of military artifacts from we assumed Thai wars or Thai involvement in external conflicts (like world wars). Guns, uniforms, military like objects and what I decided was the coolest were the swords.
I assume they are real, although I would not leave them sitting out in the open in an unattended building if they were real Japanese swords. Those are not priceless, but could buy you a new car if you cashed it in.
There were also an array of other pointy objects I found interesting, as I have an interest in pointy objects and we do not get a lot of Asian pointy objects in museums in the Midwest. Hell ton of guns, ammo, tanks, even airplanes, but lacking in the pointy things.
There was also a room, which simply had a series of pictures, a model map and nothing else.
If MJ understood the information correctly, it was about the rescue of a team of kids who went into a cave and got stuck. It was a huge rescue operation involving many nations and people pulling together to get the kids out. They all lived and now the caves are closed off, but this room ‘explained’ the events.
Me, not knowing the story, had no idea what the room was about, or why it would be in a military museum. Unless the military saved the kids. I am still unclear about what exactly happened, but apparently it was worldwide news in the past 20 years, and there is a documentary floating around somewhere about the rescue.
According to MJ, it all happened somewhere near where we were, and I believe her. I just don’t read Thai so cannot expound on the facts.
So after about 20 minutes of wandering around, we made a donation and headed back to the gardens, where we found a coffee shop. A girl was in the area, but no other customers, no employees of the museum, and apparently we were the only unexpected tourists. In a residential area with no other attractions.
The coffee shop did have nice planters, though. Made from old helmets and hung in the outdoor seating area.
Seeing no one else, and having no other reason to be there, we finally moved on, but I will say, as random museums go, it wasn’t bad.
