National Museum

National Museum, originally uploaded by AnnaRae.

After a long string of lazy weekends, my roommates and I decided it was high time to do something touristy. We ended up visiting the National Museum-- still in Bangkok, but a long enough skytrain and boat ride for us to feel a world away from our neighborhood.

We found the museum pretty easily after a meandering walk down a street filled with amulet vendors. The museum was enormous, a fact I only realized after looking at my map as I walked out of the first gallery (where I'd spent an hour). Really? That one building was only a tenth of the museum? The first gallery we were in was devoted to Thai history from cavemen up until modern day, with over half of it devoted to the kings and their wonderous works. The displays had English writing so I managed to get a good history lesson out of it. The other galleries were devoted to art and artifacts so they didn't require quite so much time. There was the wood carving room, the porcelain room, the ivory room, etc., etc. The museum had some really beautiful and priceless artifacts and I enjoyed exploring it, but the displays were terrible. Lighting was poor, many things were crammed one on top of another, some galleries had a hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated objects. A good curator could do the place wonders.

We finished up our day trip with a stroll and dinner on Khao San Road. Still as grimy and touristy as the last time I visited it!