Dubai Museum, United Arab Emirates

Dubai Museum, United Arab Emirates

As already mentioned in an earlier post this week, during a visit to Bur Dubai, we didn't have time to visit the Dubai Museum, but yesterday I went back and did visit the museum.

The museum was opened by the ruler of Dubai in 1971, with the aim of presenting the traditional way of life in the Emirate of Dubai. It includes local antiquities as well as artifacts from African and Asian countries that traded with Dubai. It also includes several dioramas showing life in the emirate before the advent of oil. In addition to artifacts from recent discoveries as old as 3000 B.C.

An old style water tank, needed to survive in this desert climate.

Al Fahidi Fort, where the museum is located, was built in several phases. The oldest tower was built around 1787 and believed to be the oldest building in Dubai that still exists today. The fort was used to guard the landward approaches to the town from the raids of neighbouring tribes. It has also served, at various times throughout history as the ruler's palace, a garrison, and a prison.

The dioramas are the nice touch to this museum, just as shown above, a diorama about traditional clothing. You would expect a very hyper technical and digital museum, just like the rest of the city but instead this museum is very 'old fashioned' with it's dioramas which make for a great break and change of pace.

Outside of the museum is a dhow, a traditional Arab sailing vessel, with a mosque's minaret in the background.

Ski Dubai

After the museum visit we went to the Mall of the Emirates by local subway, this is one of the bigger malls in Dubai and very impressive. It hosts Ski Dubai, an indoor ski resort! Just so it's set apart from other malls in Dubai.

Later today I'll be back on the plane to Thailand and Samui. Thanks for checking into my Dubai updates and see you soon on Samui again.

Camille

Koh Lanta Museum, Old Town

Koh Lanta Museum, Old Town

On a trip to the Old Town, in the very deep Southern part of Koh Lanta, in search of the local hospital, I drove past the Old Town and decided to have a look inside and I was struck by the charm of this small village. Just for the record, one of the road sign spelled Old Town as 'Oil Town', a classic TIT!

One of the very first things that struck me and caught my attention was a house built in a style of mansions and houses in the deep South of the USA. Have a look at the picture above, to me that house yells 'The South will rise'.

To my big surprise however, it turns out to be the local museum! As described on the plaque above. Unfortunately it looked very much closed and not to be opened in the near future.

One of the few or rather only things on display is this boat, whatever it represents. This is actually what caught my eye and made me decide to stop and have a look, since it looked so scenic!

The whole house has been recently renovated and painted but it also looks that the day after it's official opening and the brass left Koh Lanta, it was closed immediately. Don't these stairs look like stairs coming straight out of a Stephen King novel or movie?

I would love to have the opportunity to visit the actual museum and will ask around a little bit if and when it may be open or maybe get somebody to open it just for me.

Stay tuned!

Camille

Ban Chiang National Museum

Ban Chiang National Museum,

Has been on the UNESCO world heritage list since 1992. Ban Chiang is the most modern and well maintained museum I've ever visited in Thailand so far.
Having said that, it took us a bit of reasoning with the staff at the entrance gate, to get me in at Thai rates, as already discussed during our visit to Phi Mai on our way to Udon Thani.

Ban Chiang is located very near the highway and from Korat to Khon Kaen/Udon Thani and is definitely worthwhile stopping at. The museum itself consists of only one building, but this building hosts plenty of artifacts. There's loads of information on the web to be found on Ban Chiang, including on the website of the University of Pennsylvania museum.

The archeological site of Ban Chiang is important evidence of a prehistoric population that settled in Southeast Asia more than 5.000 years ago. The population was culturally developed, as well as sociologically and technologically advanced.

The site of this early agricultural community, with also of metal production and use, was continuously occupied for about 3.800 years. Artifacts, including implements and ornaments of bronze and iron, as well as pottery with sophisticated and unique designs, attest to the advanced culture of this prehistoric settlement.

In addition to it's academic value, the Ban Chiang archeological site is also important because of the local community's participation in preservation efforts. Laws were enacted to protect the site, and a museum was established to disseminate information about it. Because of it's importance, the Royal Thai Government requested the World Heritage Commitee of Unesco to register the archeological site of Ban Chiang as a World Heritage Site. In 1992 Ban Chiang was listed as World Heritage Site Number 359, following registration criteria;

It represents a rare and unique monument or it attest to a tradition or civilization that is either active or already extinct.

Outside of the museum are a couple of souvenir shops that sell copies of the pottery, found at the archeological sites. It's beautifully designed and well worth picking up some items. They also sell T-shirts which spell 'Ban Chaing', which I discovered upon arrival home!

As already mentioned before, if in the neighbourhood, try to visit it.

Unfortunately, some of the artifacts have already gone missing, but an investigation led to retrieval of the artifacts and they may be returned to Thailand, as reported in The Nation today;

The Fine Arts Department has sought an investigation to establish if stolen artifacts uncovered following a crackdown in the United States belonged to the ancient Ban Chiang period.

Published on January 28, 2008

US authorities raided four museums in southern California last week, breaking an illegal network smuggling the items into the US.

The department wants the artefacts returned to the King-dom if they were found to be from Ban Chiang, the oldest known civilisation in the King-dom, which dates back to 1,000 BC.
Fine Arts Department director Kriangkrai Sampatchalit wanted clear proof about the artefacts. "We would ask Unesco's International Council of Museums to check whether they are genuine objects. If they are real we would provide historical evidence to prove they belong to Thailand," he said by phone yesterday.

Dozens of US federal agents descended on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasa-dena's Pacific Asia Museum, Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and Mingei International Museum in San Diego.

The raids marked the first public move in a five-year undercover probe of the alleged smuggling network, The Los Angeles Time reported on Friday.

The detailed warrants gave agents broad authority to search the museums' galleries, offices, storage areas and computer archives.

They were looking for objects and records related to the primary targets of the investigation: an alleged art smuggler, Robert Olson, and the owner of a Los Angeles Asian art gallery, Jonathan Markell.

Markell's Silk Roads Gallery on La Brea Avenue was also raided.
No arrests were made, but legal experts say the surprise search warrants suggest prosecutors are collecting the final elements to seek criminal indictments against Markell and Olson, the paper said.

Many objects come from the ancient civilisation of Ban Chiang, which occupied northeastern Thailand from 1000 BC to 200 AD.

"The original location where the Ban Chiang culture was discovered was named a World Heritage Site in 1992 and is considered the most important pre-historic settlement yet discovered in Southeast Asia," the search warrants said.

The warrants allege that the Ban Chiang objects are probably looted because they were first excavated by archaeologists in 1967, six years after Thailand banned the export of antiquities.
The Thai government never gave permission for the contested antiquities to leave the country.
Moreover, importing such objects into the US after 1979 was a violation of the US National Stolen Property Act and the Archaeological Resource Protection Act, the warrants state.
Other objects named in the warrants came from Burma, from which the US has banned imports since 2003, and China, which has strict export laws governing its antiquities.

The investigation began in 2003, when the undercover agent with the National Park Service posed as a buyer and began purchasing allegedly looted art from Olson, according to the warrants. Olson, the warrants say, specialises in Native American and Thai antiquities.
Olson allegedly told the agent he had been importing objects from Ban Chiang since the 1980s and had never received a permit from the Thai government. He said he got objects "as they were being dug up" and knew it was illegal to ship them out of the country, the warrants say.
The smuggled antiquities were affixed with "Made in Thailand" labels, and sometimes painted over to make them look to US customs officials like modern replicas, Olson allegedly told the agent.

Mayuree Sukyingcharoenwong

Los Angeles Times
The Nation

Day 6; trip to Vientiane, Lao PDR.

Day 6; trip to Vientiane, Lao PDR.

Today started with breakfast at the hotel after which we left for Nong Khai, a small Town located at the border with Lao PDR (People’s Democratic Republic).


After a 30 minute trip, having arrived in Nong Khai, we needed to wait for about an hour for the official papers for our Thai friends that allowed them entry to Lao. Nong Khai seems like a real nice and tidy place, especially between 8 and 9 am.

A consistent theme seems to be a Naga (snake like creature), which is to be found at the entrance of the city and in the city itself at this roundabout.

Building next to That Luang, Vientiane

After we got to the Thai - Lao border, both countries were always divided by the Mekong river but fairly recently they are now connected by the Thai - Lao friendship bridge, which we crossed into Lao.

At the border it was organized chaos, first I had to get a Visa for Lao, at the cost of 1.500,-Baht, which took about half an hour to obtain and than we were on the road to Vientiane, pronounced by the Thais as something similar to Vieng Chan.

Immediately after crossing the border and taking a right turn to Vientiane, you notice that life has a different pace. The speed limit is 50 km on a simple road and nobody dares to drive any faster. There are less cars and some of the cars around are of decent age and there are plenty of motorbikes.

Vientiane is a relatively small city, although it’s Lao’s capital city, but it’s nicely spread out with fairly big and wide roads and boulevards.

First we went to visit Pha That Luang, which is a famous and probably the biggest temple complex in Vientiane. Unfortunately it's hard to get good information about all the places we visited, since there was nothing available in any way that explained the things we looked at.

After that we went to Ho Phrae Keo. We got there just before noon and it’s closed between noon and 1 pm , just like the Sisaket museum, opposite Ho Phra Keaw, so beware.

Ho Prae Keo was built in 1565 a.d. by the great King Xaise Thatirath, the Lao Lanexan Kingdom.

It housed the Emerald Buddha which now can be found in Bangkok, Thailand within the grounds of the Grand Palace at the Wat Phra Kaew.

We went for an excellent lunch, at Khambang Lao Food, a place in a side street off the boulevard along the Mekong river. We had some delicious dishes, amongst other two of these grilled Mekong river fishes, grilled beef tongue, Laab muu and a great salad.

Of course, as part of the lunch we had some Beer Lao, one of the better beers in the region, which is now also widely available in Samui.

After the lunch we were off to the Sisaket museum again, where there are more than 6000 Buddha images on the premises. Some of them very old and beautifully sculptured.

Here are some of the 6.000 Buddha images, the couples in the background each depicting a man and a woman.

Our guide took us than to a market, which I sat out, since our son was asleep and I stayed with the children at the car.

This was our last stop within the Vientiane city limits and we continued on, back to the border, where it was time for some tax free shopping. A bottle of Port wine and Black Jim in the van later, it turned out that Chot and Kob purchased a 4 liter bottle of Red Label (Johnny Walker) and the driver than decided to stock up the car with another dozen of cheap whiskies, which he sells off after getting back home in Nong Khai.

Back in Nong Khai, we went and visited the very well known Wat (= Temple) Po Chai. This Wat houses a very famous Golden Buddha statue, the Luang Po Pra Sai which attracts pilgrims from all over Thailand.

We bought a couple of Buddha amulet’s in the Temple, something I more frequently do when traveling around and visiting local Temples. During a long time I thought that if you saw one Temple, you saw them all, but recently I find myself more intrigued by the various Temples all over Thailand (whenever I’m near one) and like to visit them and find out what makes them special. They also play a very important part in daily Thai life, so I’m kind of loosing my religion if it comes down to Temples.

On the way back to our hotel in Udon, we also made a stop in Tan Bo, were a former colleague of my wife now lives and she cooked dinner for us.

All in all a very busy but interesting and enjoyable day.

Camille

The Ancient City or Muang Boran, Samut Prakan.

The Ancient City or Muang Boran, Samut Prakan.

Yesterday saw us visiting three museums! One of them was the 'Ancient City' or Muang Boran!The other being the Erawan Museum or Chang Erawan. It's a 29 meter high, three headed Elephant or including the building a mere 43.6 meters and at last the Thai Naval Museum, both also located in Samut Prakan.

The Ancient City is located within 10 Kilometres of the Chang Erawan and is laid out over 800 Rai or 320 acres.
It's shaped in the form of Thailand and it has currently 116 downscaled monuments from all over Thailand on it's premises and more to come.
The monuments are about a third or quarter of the original size of the monuments. They're also located within the park in the direct vicinity where they would be located in Thailand itself.

You can enter the park by car or rent bicycles or golf carts. All over the place are restaurants conveniently located and shops to buy local products.

There are too many nice places to look at but one of them is a small 'Floating Market' as the original can be found in the North of Bangkok.

Here's a scaled version of a temple located in the North of Thailand, Wat Chong Kahm in Lampang.

My wife loved the place and wants to come back and spend more time here. She thought that people who live in Bangkok went to the 'local restaurants' on the premises to feel at home and stay in touch with the home city/province.

It's a very relaxed park and again, well worthwhile visiting.

Camille

Erawan Museum, Samut Prakan

Yesterday saw us visiting three museums!

One of them was the Erawan Museum or Chang Erawan. It's a 29 meter high, three headed Elephant or including the building a mere 43.6 meters!

The other being the 'Ancient City' or Muang Boran and at last the Thai Naval Museum, both also located in Samut Prakan.

Chang Erawan and the Ancient city in Samut Prakan are owned by the same people.


It's a massive construction, as can be seen above, about a hundred meters away from the Elephant. It's located at the Sukhumvit Road, coming from Bangkok direction Pattaya, the 'old road' to Pattaya. It's located in Samut Prakan, a province and city by it's own rights, directly located next to Bangkok.

There are only three heads displayed, but it should be 33 heads, just to make things a bit easier, they only make 3 heads, as can be seen above. The weight of the heads alone is 100 tons.

There are three floors inside the Elephant, the lower one being a museum or the Underworld (Naga world), the ground floor one being the belly, as seen here, which is beautifully decorated (Human World) and the top one, the head, is decorated with tempera paintings depicting the solar system (Tavatimsa Heaven).

This hall is a fantastic view with the ceiling having western stained glass featuring the world map and zodiacs.

The main hall is decorated with pieces from broken or complete cups, ranging in price from a couple of Bath to a couple of thousand baht per cup! Here you can clearly see the spoons they used for decoration!

This picture shows the various cups used to decorate the walls.

Have a read through the various links, this place is a definite must, I found it very impressing and it's located within an hour of Bangkok downtown (Sukhumvit area).

Camille

First day, arrived at Prachuap Khirikhan

The first day of our trip.

Today we left at 7 am for the car ferry in Nathon where we had a reservation waiting for us, which proved to be very helpful, since all the buses for the main land are on this ferry as well, so it was pretty jam packed in the car parking area.

The ferry trip was rather uneventful, as was the trip over to Prachuap Khirikhan, our first stop over of this trip. We try not to travel too much each day, so the children aren’t stuck in the car all day. It looks like today may have been one of the longer days.

Coming from the South, just before you reach Prachuap, Thailand has its smallest passage with just a few kilometers between the coast at one side and Myanmar at the other side.
There’s also nearby a point where the two coasts are just a few kilometers apart from each other

Prachuap is a lovely, sleepy little town which won us over immediately, which we reached by 3 pm. Very quickly we found a hotel, the Had Thong Hotel, where we got a Jr. Suite for just 1.100,-Baht per night.

During the Ayudhaya period (1350-1767), the town was known as Muang Bang Nang Rom, a small fishing village, this was later changed during the early 1900 to Prachuap Khirikhan meaning ‘A town among Mountain Chains’. There are some lovely views here and great beaches to be found in this province.




After having checked in to the hotel, we decided for a small tour to see what was up here and we discovered ‘Ao Manao’ or Lemon Bay. Funnily enough, this bay is located smack in the middle of a Thai Air Force base, but it’s accessible for non Navy personal and has a lots of charms inside it’s premises. First of all a couple of beautiful bays but also a lot of green with some pleasant, unexpected attractions. The picture above is 'Ao Manao' just before sunset.

Here;s another bay at the Air Force base. All in all a worthwhile place to visit with plenty of things to see, besides just hanging out at the beach.

The Air Force likes to show their heroes and this is one of them, in front of the Air Force museum on the base. Very heroic! It almost looks like a surfer but he's actually standing on a propeller blade.

Some old and outdated planes are on display throughout the whole base, which is right up my ally and me and the kids had a great time getting shots of all the various planes.

there’s also a monkey conservation program as well, for the Duskar Langur monkeys and they were all over the place, running around or sitting in trees and minding their own business.

Here's a bunch of them sitting in a tree and eating and chatting away. The kids just loved it!

There's also an Air Force museum, as already mentioned, which was closed unfortunately and just overall, it all has a great quiet and relaxed feel to it and we felt straight away at home. The interesting thing is however, that all the time you’re in this Air Force base. Very interesting!

After having checked the Lemon Bay and the various sights at the base, we returned to downtown Prachuap and had something to eat in a local restaurant.
Prachuap hosts a very nice and cozy ‘boulevard’ where again, everything is very relaxed and easy going. The restaurant we ate at was called Ma-Prow (coconut) and had some good food, Fried fish and squid, pork with veggies and glass noodles with curry powder and crab meat (pad Bunsen pong curry puu). It was a tad bit expensive for being located at the beach/boulevard I guess, but it was good nonetheless.

All in all a very nice and relaxed place, Prachuap Khirikhan and I can highly recommend stopping by if you happen to be in the hood.

Tomorrow we’re off to Bangkok. We will try to get an early start, since it’s children’s day tomorrow (only in Thailand?) and we want to maximize our time in Bangkok, since we only have two days there. This pretty much means shopping tomorrow at the various shopping malls Bangkok hosts, like Central Chitlom, Siam Paragon and who knows how many other ones the missus comes up with ;-)

Camille

The not so mummified Monk in Wat Lamai.

On the search for Mummified Monks on Samui.

Monique told me about a supposed Mummified Monk in Lamai's Temple and immediately my interest was peeked and I felt the urge to investigate.


Having already visited the Mummified Monks in Wat Kanuram near Lamai and Wat Kiri Wongkaram in Baan Taling Ngam this was too good to be true to find a third one and it was too good to be true, so read on if you made it this far.





The entrance sign to Wat Lamai or are we more into Motocross events?

Here's a picture of the supposed Mummified Monk, he's however sooo well preserved, that it doesn't take long to realise that it's a wax figurine. Nonetheless, a very interesting way of displaying a well honored Monk and in sharp contrast to the very common glass boxes with a more 'simple' statue in it.

Here's 'Lang Poo Thuad Yeb Num Thale Jued' or the 'The Monk who walked on fresh water'. There's not any more information available at the Temple, at least not what I could find.

This is the area where the Monk is displayed, accompanied by more Deities. The carpet in front of the Monk is used for worshippers to sit down on and pray.

On the premises of the Temple are also the Natural Museum of which I already reported (part 1 and 2) and a couple of more areas with more statues of monks, like this 'hole in the wall' alike part of the temple.

All in all a very worthwhile destination if you're doing the almost compulsory 'trip around the island'. Wat Lamai can easily kill an hour during your trip with all has to offer.

Camille

Natural Museum Lamai, part 2

Here are some more pictures of the Natural Museum in Lamai.

After my post of part 1 of the Natural Museum in the Temple in Lamai, I thought it to a good time to post some more pictures about this fascinating place.




There's a big cabinet displaying all kinds of various Thai bank notes through the 'ages'. There are quit a few that I remember, even the 10 Baht notes and also a wide variety of 50 and 500 Baht notes. Interesting to see, in my humble opinion.

These 3 vases are also on display. Chinese I would guess, they're beautiful but unfortunately there's absolutely no information on them whatsoever.

There are a few (push) bicycles on display as well, to my rather big surprise. Than again, some of the things on display will most certainly raise a few eyebrows, rather obscure to say the least but I think that's also part of the charm of the place.

An intricate weighing system, similar to one that my wife's Mum used to have, a long time ago.

This is a very interesting set of items. Have a good look, see anything strange? Did you notice their iron or steel tongues sticking out? These figurines are all used to split the coconuts open, so the coconut flesh can be taken out. This is some real good and original Samui tradition on display. Similar items can sometimes still be seen in use in real life nowadays, although the 'tongues' aren't attached to such beautiful tongue holders. Most of the time it's just a steel rod connected to a piece of wood.

As already mentioned in some posts, Samui used to be Thailand's main coconut provider, until a few years back, tourism took over as the main financial provider for the island.

A funny anecdote about the coconuts is this one;

In the older days, not even too long ago, all the 'good land', being land with lots of coconut trees on it, was given to the favorite sons and/or daughters and the less popular off spring 'got stuck' with the worthless beach land. In the more popular areas like Chaweng, beach land goes nowadays for anywhere between 30 to 50 Million Baht per Rai.

Hope you enjoy these pictures and make sure to visit this Natural Museum in Lamai.

Camille

Natural Museum Lamai, part 1

Today was a day of exploration.

Since the day started out beautifully with a blue sky, we decided to go on a trip to the Southern part of Koh Samui, the Lamai, Baan Taling Ngaam and Lipa Noi area's.

It was also part of my plan to visit two temples of which I recently found out that they supposedly have mummified monks in them. Since this came as big surprise to me, I had to investigate this. The only mummified monk I'm aware of on Samui, is in Wat Kanuram, about whom I posted already.

At the first temple we visited today, in the middle of Lamai so to speak, a pleasant surprise was sprung on me. The temple houses a Natural Museum, in all it's fantastic, dusty museum glory, filed far away on a second floor, inside the temple grounds, where time just had stood still and plenty of traditional Samui tools and artifacts are collecting dust and waiting to be discovered. I took so many pictures in this museum alone that I can easily cover three or four posts about this place. Today part 1.

The temple in question is located on the ring road and driving from Lamai to Nathon, there will be a very hard left turn in the road, that's where the temple is located, at your right hand.




Once you enter he temple grounds, pretty much straight ahead, is a 'mummified monk' who's not that mummified at all but is still very fascinating, more on him on a different day.
The museum is at your left hand, across a fairly big open space. There are stairs in the left hand corner, after you crossed the open space, that lead up to the museum and here's a picture of the museum signs.

Inside you get the feeling that time stood still. There's a back row of glass cabinets and lots of artifacts are located seemingly randomly in the big room, housing the museum. It was a pleasant surprise for me to find out that there was a museum at all but even more pleasant was to find that it is one of these absolute charming places where you just wander around and it just tastes like times long gone by. No explanations are given so it's a good thing my wife knows and/or recognises plenty of the displayed items and what they were used for!

It was really nice to find a very small corner of the floor being dedicated to the old tradition of fishing, something that on Koh Samui comes natural to many on the island. A fishing net and various fish traps are being displayed.

Some of the cabinets have just the most wonderful and seemingly completely random items displayed, in cabinets, like this one here. Some teak wood figurines next to an old 6-tees vinyl 'pick up' player which on it's turn sits next to an old gramophone player with a big horn on it! Makes no sense at all but they look just fabulous.

This wooden construction is an old style 'machine' to make khanom chin, a kind of Thai spaghetti.

Today was a very nice day, we saw lots of interesting places, met some nice people and found some true gems on Koh Samui, well worthwhile visiting, amongst others this Natural Museum in Lamai and there's more to come on this place, in part 2!

Camille