Jim Thompson House

So this past weekend we hit one of the typical European tourist spots--Jim Thompson's house. Jim Thompson was an officer of the OSS, who apparently retired to Bangkok where he helped revive the hand-woven silk industry. While here he built a house made from six other teak Thai houses from around Bangkok, and collected a wide array of antiques. He died 'mysteriously' in Malaysia, and his house--now owned by the corporation that bears his name--is open to the public.

At least, that's what the brochure tells you. Some local informants have leaked that Jim Thompson was apparently hit by a car on a road in the back-country of Malaysia. The driver was supposedly frightened that he had hit and killed a white man, and so it went unreported, with Jim Thompson simply 'disappearing'. This story, too, has some holes, but it seems a reasonable explanation.

Regardless, we got a lot more than we bargained for here. I imagined that this would be pretty kitchy, but there were a lot of good things to see. First of all, there is the house and outbuildings:



I'm not sure about all the buildings on the property, but the main house is definitely a conglomeration of several Thai houses. Underneath the pillars is a stone-floored area that is almost like an open-air museum, with some exquisite pieces. Inside is a kitchen, dining room, living room, office and bedroom.



There are steps everywhere, as the entire house is on stilts. The front entrance used to face the klong, or canal, to the north. To the south was the garden, with other small outbuildings that currently hold various artifacts.



Some of the buildings date to the Ayutthaya period. This one was a storehouse for rice and grain. It currently holds some of the antique paraphenalia used for the weaving of silk




They won't allow pictures inside the house, but they will allow it outside in the garden and in the outbuildings. They would even allow pictures from outside of the inside--so I'm not sure entirely what the policy was all about, really.



This Buddhist statue and another one one the other side of the house were quite old--the other is apparently famous, but we didn't get a picture. Sigh. We did get a lot of pictures of other pieces of art, though.



These two panels come from the Ayutthaya period--probably 17th century.



One small outbuilding was filled with pictures (click on any of our photos to see our complete gallery on Flickr). Unfortunately there was no information on them, so trying to classify them into periods remains the task of the observer.

This turned out to be a place we would definitely take people if they are in town. The tour is brief, and the garden is wonderful. We may even post more of the photos here, unless Ellen wants to talk about our trip to Chatuchak some weekends ago. However, it is getting late and I am getting tired, so I will sign off for now.