A Boxing Day Walk

Bangkok, Day 37

Today, we are to take things a little easy - well I mean it's not like we are travelling at breakneck pace or doing really exhausting stuff but the heat sometimes dictates your activities for you and today we don't plan on doing too much walking, so we decide to look for the nearby park that we had intended to visit previously but didn't quite make it.

We don't leave the apartment until a bit later, too, so by the time we get out, it's nearing lunchtime and R's getting a case of the rumbletums!

We find a great little restaurant on Thanon Suan Phlu, and we both order Khao Soi dishes (chicken for me and beef for R). OMG - these were bowls of rich and creamy deliciousness, but also a little spicy and the heat accumulated as you progressed. That said, we managed to finish most of it apart from a little of the soup.

Suan Phlu Park

After lunch we make our way to the Suan Plu Park which was created to mark the 80th Birthday Anniversary of the King. It's quite a small public park and although it had a number of water features and ponds, it seemed a little neglected, so perhaps the maintenance budgets are a little limited for this park. I'm sure the lily ponds are very pretty when in flower, but these were not in flower at the time we visited.

We also passed by a different entrance way (than we had come across previously) to the Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep. This had quite a lovely and ornate building overlooking a pond area with lots of very nice old metal seats all around it.

Whilst we were going through the Suan Phlu Park, we came across another building which turned out to be the Thai Health Promotion Foundation.

The Thai Health Promotion Foundation was quite an impressive building, and all about health promotion. There were several sculptures, gardens and a café, and it very much had a focus on energy efficiency and sustainability as well as health promotion. There were about 6 floors to the building, and I loved their electronic dashboard, which showed all the data for the building for energy, waste, etc. I understand it was set up to work with industry, government and University sectors in this area, so very similar to what a lot of technology and innovation-type places are doing.

M.R. Kukrit - Past President of Thailand

Mom Rajawongse Kukrit Pramoj was a Thai politician, author, scholar and professor. He was Speaker of the House of Representatives of Thailand between 1973 and 1974 and the thirteenth Prime Minister of Thailand, (1975 to 1976). Being the great-grandson of King Rama II, he was a member of the Thai royal family. He also portrayed the Prime Minister of the fictional country of Sarkhan in the 1963 motion picture The Ugly American with Marlon Brando.

The home that M.R. Kukrit built for himself in Bangkok has been registered by the Department of Fine Arts as 'Home of an Important Person'. Standing on 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land, surrounded by landscaped gardens, the house is a similar concept to the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok. Five small traditional Thai houses were dismantled and reassembled at the present site to make one house. The house is filled with artefacts and books collected by the owner. Additions to the original house include air conditioning, a modern bathroom, and a lift was installed when the owner became too frail to climb up and down stairs. The M.R. Kukrit Heritage Home is situated at 19 Soi Phra Pinit, South Sathorn Road, Sathon District, Bangkok 10120. The home used to be open to the public, but has been closed since COVID.

The reason that I include this piece about M.R. Kukrit is that his home is on the same street that our apartment is, and we pass it regularly during our outings. We've visited the Jim Thompson museum, and we would have loved to have visited this home too, as it looks amazing from the photos on the web and from the very little we can see as we stretch our necks walking past. M.R. Kukrit was also a very talented man who achieved a lot in his time.

After our exploration, we headed back to the apartment, passing some interesting old streets on our way, and once back home, we just chilled with Neko.

Neko is very kindly assisting and keeping me company whilst I try and write up my blog!

Bangkok, Thailand

26 December 2024