In the morning I went to Suan Pakkad, which is the home of a princely family, now turned into a sort of museum of their personal collections. It’s laid out in a series of Thai wooden stilt houses connected by walkways, and the houses were generally the best part of it as the collections themselves were interesting, but not arranged with any great skill. One of the collections was a princess’s collection of specimens, which I was quite envious of, having a haphazard collection of my own, with as little labelling etc, but of course her specimens were much nicer. In the collection was an entire lacquer work pavilion from Ayutthaya, which was quite interesting, though I did wonder if the arrangement in the house was it would have been, as it felt not quite right. In any case it had very lively and engaging pictures from Buddhist texts and the Thai version of the Ramayan, with some slightly startling ones, like one of a demon pulling a cow’s tail resulting in a volley of cow pats.
There is also an art institute in the grounds, which had one room open, with some interesting Bronze Age pottery, and rather a lot about how it had been ‘discovered’, by the son of the American ambassador who was in town researching for his senior thesis, fell over and found a Bronze Age pot right before his nose, complete with the panel stating something like ‘this is the only museum in the world with the right to tell his story’. There was even a little diorama of him falling over.
It was extremely hot again, but I decided to walk to a tomyum place about 20 minutes away for lunch. This turned out to be a good decision, as though the first half of the walk (which was also the walk to the BTS) was along immense roads and felt like every breath taken was costing me five in the future, the second half was through tiny alleys passing through a quiet residential neighbourhood until it opened up into a sort of bazaar. The tom yum was delicious. It is a very touristy spot, I understand, but it was certainly very tasty. This energised me so much that though I went back to the flat for the worst of the afternoon, I ventured out again and this time to mall-land to buy a facemask of a brand the GF had earlier bought. I am quite sceptical of its anti-bacterial/ anti-covid/ anti-everything claims, but it is by far the most comfortable mask I’ve worn, and when mask theatre is called for, as it sometimes is these days, I will wear it. For actual use, I have a pack of real masks. I then went to Uniqlo and bought some long-needed bits and pieces, including a men’s sunhat. This again was the same one the GF possesses, so we will look quite silly if we wear these things together – not least because we also have the same walking sandals. On the way out I got thoroughly trapped in the mall, and escaped with some difficulty – I hate malls, why are they so confusing? – but the tomyum kept me going. On the way back it was dinner time and I was in no mood to cook so went to a southern Thai place for a rather lavish dinner, with enough leftovers that I will be eating them for the next three days.