Erawan Museum

After Ancient City, we took a taxi 25 minutes to the Erawan Museum, operated by the same group. You can not walk to it as it is surrounded by roads. The Museum's construction began in 1994 and photographs indicate there were none of the elevated highways that now surround it were present. Despite this, the museum and grounds are quite quiet. It is topped by huge massive three headed elephant made of bronze.

The museum is sectioned into 3 levels, the idea came from a book of Bhumitha, that heaven and earth are separated into 3 which are the underworld, the human earth, and heaven. The third part of the museum's lowest level or the underground is called Suvarnabhumi and the second level is the human earth, while the third level located inside the elephant's body is heaven. Chinese porcelain pieces are pieced together to decorate the interior of the 2nd level and a concise description is given of four pillars of guiding philosophy/religion: Christianity, Thervada Buddism (do not believe in Buddha reincarnation: most common in Thailand, Mahayana Buddhism (believe in reincarnation ie Dali Lama) and Avatars of Vishnu.

We bought the "shuttle" ticket from the museum to the nearby BRT station and were surprised when a tuk-tuk arrived, thankfully, it did not enter the busy highway. We then caught a train to Asok, station and bought another ticket on the MRT to Wat Mangkon station in Chinatown. Chinatown was busy and we got a quick glimpse of life down the tight alleyways that were shops closing for the day. We walked to the Ratchawong Pier on the river river and caught the 1900 hrs Blue Flag boat to our Phra Arthit pier and although we were sweaty and tired, decided to sit down at a sidewalk cafe near our hotel where Doug enjoyed 1 litre of Chang beer along with his noodle dish and Nancy surprisingly enjoyed the sweet spiciness of Green Curry with tofu and mushrooms. So, it took 2.5 hours using transit to return home versus the 45 minutes by GRAB in the morning and cost was a bout the same.Read more