Thailand in a Day!

If you come and visit for only a day, I know exactly what we should do... take you to The Ancient city or Muang Boran. Sylvia and I just spent the day there and took our bicycles around this huge park just a little south of Bangkok and boy it was terrific. What it is actually is a fabulous history lesson into Thailand's past. There are replica buildings of Thailand's past going as far back in history as possible. All of the buildings and monuments ( you can see a few pictures of them if you check out my picture site) are formed around some lakes and canals and essentially wind their way around a map of Thailand if you were looking from the air. When we were tired we could find some shady table by the water to relax in the shade.

There were hundreds of school children actually going around with notebooks and viewing the buildings or monuments and writing about them starting from the earliest Sukotai period right up to the last century. What is actually amazing, when you think about it, is that these buildings are made with modern equipment and it takes forever to make. We saw them working on creating a few 'historical' buildings, but the 'historical' Thais actually created these buildings ( wats, palaces, monuments and so on) with no modern equipment. When you look at these absolutely magnificent examples of architecture you marvel at how unique Thailand is. These are not copied from any other country or period. In fact, probably just the opposite in regard to Loas and Cambodia.

One set of school kids ( and you can tell from the colour of their uniform) had an additional task of speaking with any 'farang' or foreigner and asking them specific questions. If they said; "how are you?" and we answered "fine thanks and you?", there would be no problem. If we said something like fantastic, isn't is a beautiful day, they were completely stymied, just as I am when someone deviates a little from an expected answer in Thai.

Anyway, back to what happened. As you can see from the pictures, we were accosted by dozens of kids at a time asking us their assigned questions. The only other time I have ever felt like a sports hero or rock star occurred when we were travelling the Great Wall of China and we were absolutely the only westerners those kids have ever seen. Our Chinese friend (who we met at Tiamamen Square) had to speak harshly with them and shoe them away, I remember, so we could enjoy some privacy when we were eating our ice cream.

The same thing happened today as we were riding our bikes around the park looking at these fascinating buidings. Kid upon kid descended on us for a phot op as well as a few questions. Some kids could not deviate from the script but others went to town on it. Both the kids, Sylvia and I had a ball with this.

I had probably seen about half of the originals but now am really keen on exploring further. I actually know where to go because it was so clearly laid out at the park. I just hope I am not bored by the original. Wouldn't that be a drag!