Learning Thai

When we first moved to the Bangkok area, we used most of our weekends for tourist trips into the city to explore. As the newness has worn off, we've done tourist trips mainly when we've had visitors. But we still have a lot to explore and learn, so we decided to use this past Saturday to check out a place a little closer to home: the Erawan Elephant museum (in Pak Nam, a 10 minute ride from our house).

We've seen the huge three-headed elephant from the road, but we didn't realize that it is surrounded by a beautiful garden and has an interesting museum inside.

The girls posing with some little girls doing traditional Thai dance outside the museum. Claire and Eliza really loved the trip- especially the tiny Thai tea sets, walking up the steps in the elephant's leg and feeding fish in the fountains.

The beautiful stained glass ceiling of the museum which shows a world map and zodiac. The museum is located beneath the large three-headed elephant, and even goes up into the body of the elephant. The bottom level has many beautiful displays of ancient Chinese and Thai furniture and utensils (I saw a ming dynasty vase!), the main hall was a shrine, and the elephant body houses Buddha relics and images.

Photo by Claire. We are with a beast which is said to keep the unworthy out of heaven!

The main hall also has four pillars depicting the four major world religions which are said to support world peace. Interesting to see the stories of the Bible depicted in such a place.

This elephant is HUGE. We always stare in awe as we pass by on the road and it's even more impressive up close. To give you an idea of it's size, it weighs 250 tons and is 29 m. tall (95 ft.).

More photography by Claire.

-Candice