Not Tourists, Visitors

Today, we made our first real adventure out from under Kristina and Eileen’s wing. We started the day going to the Vichayut Hospital to get our vaccinations for Typhoid and Japanese Encephalitis and once there we were treated to top notch care and given our own pair of guides to help us through the process. We got the Typhoid shots today and will get the others on Wednesday (it is Monday her because we are 14 hours ahead of the west coast). The Typhoid shots cost 525 baht each which is about a third of what they would’ve cost in the U.S. (Kids, friends, Americans, come to Thailand for your medical treatment. It costs less and is better service.)

Having taken care of our first order of business, we headed out into the city, buying our rail passes and feeling very much like locals, or at least visitors privy to information that most other travelers aren’t. We felt special and elite, though the feeling was probably completely unwarranted. Our big ticket item for the day was the Jim Thompson House. Jim Thompson evidently led the rejuvenation of the Thai silk industry in the 1950s and with his considerable wealth he built a traditional Thai house, or rather, reassembled a set of Thai houses from around the country and connected each to the next. In the center, he planted a veritable jungle, which is precisely what he called it according to our guide. After the grand opening in 1959, he opened the house to the public with all the proceeds going to various Thai charities (today the proceeds go to the school for the blind). Inside he had arranged a massive collection of ancient religious artifacts and pieces of art, included beautifully ornate cloth paintings from the 18th century and Buddhist statues from as far back as the 14th century. They were all quite spectacular, but we cannot provide any photos because cameras were not allowed inside the house (we did take a picture looking into the living room).



The other draw for the House, besides the architecture and art, is the fact that on March 26th, 1967, Jim Thompson disappeared from the face of the earth, or seemed to anyway. It is doubtful to us that he actually disappeared. Disappearing entirely is near impossible without a lot of TNT and even then, people at least know that you disappeared. In this case, what happened to Jim Thompson is what isn’t known. Anyway, what makes this even stranger is that a year later his sister, living in the U.S. vanished herself. Weird stuff.

Anyway, having had our fill of tourist-like activity (if you recall, we decided that we are not tourists at all, but rather, we are visitors), we went to the Siam Mall to get something to eat because there was very little street food to be found. (For those who might be interested, they had Harry Potter at the IMax.) Now we’re back, hot, sweaty, sticky and tired, but embuoyed with a sense of accomplishment.