Travel Notes from Thailand's Ancient City
The Ancient City in Thailand… it’s an interesting sort of place. Imagine you were a wealthy businessman who wanted to do something nice for your country. I know, you think, I’ll build an amusement park! But not the sort of amusement park with daredevil rollercoasters and log flumes. The kind that plots a map of the entire country on some empty land and fills it with a mix of transplanted, recreated or just plain made up landmarks that correspond to each region of the country’s geography. That makes sense, right? Well, that is the Ancient City in a nutshell.
Pay to get in, then ride a bicycle or drive a golf cart around the winding paths to see various structures either moved here or constructed here so you can get a feel for every part of the country and all the unique cultures contained therein. You’ll see things like this:
Because every theme park needs some random cattle, right?
And some pretty flowers.
As well as samples of product packaging over the years.
No rollercoasters, but on the plus side, you also don’t have to queue for anything and the ladies’ room was the cleanest of all I saw in Thailand, I do believe!
The real reason The Boy was a fan: he could drive a golf cart all afternoon. He would quite happily forget the ‘lf’ at the end of ‘golf’ and tell you this was a go cart instead. Oh my. So maybe there was nearly one rollercoaster, if you were a passenger on this cart!
And if you can understand what they mean by all that, then your translation skills are awesome. (Not that I could read a word of it in Thai – just that this particular translation is more creative than others!)
There are temples, ruins, bridges, homes, waterfalls, mountainsides, rivers and ancient burial grounds all recreated here.
Which makes it seem like a geography teacher’s dream: can you imagine the field trip potential? I am sure there are often many children here with worksheets in hand.
Though that might be a bit confusing when you come to a spot on the map where it indicates that some pieces were just made up from their imagination, like a bridge (over no water) painted like a rainbow and clouds. The little-known Rainbow Brite province, I do believe.
Rather than school children when we were there we saw a corporate retreat, with all sorts of groups doing trust falls and scavenger hunts… something comforted me that those mixed up days are part of business life all over the world! I went on many as a teacher and they were always a little hit and miss. But then they were usually in the school yard or maybe a conference room at a local hotel. Not a theme park of national landmarks!
Okay, so maybe I think this whole idea is slightly comical, but it is worth seeing. It’s a very pleasant place and far quieter than Alton Towers or Six Flags, of course. And it did let us see a bit about life in years gone by or parts of the country we’re not going to see with our own eyes.
And just to ensure family and friends that I am actually here and this isn’t a random joke I’m blogging from my bedroom in London, some photographic evidence of my location:
Now… share a slightly funny thing to see if I came to your neck of the woods! After all, I hail from the state with the world’s second largest ball of twine, so your locale must have something unique too! (And given the choice, definitely go see the Ancient City rather than the ball of twine! But if you happen to be driving by…)
xlovesx
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