OznAsia

A few years back on one of my early visits to Thailand I was taken by a friend to visit Muang Boran, the Ancient City, in Samut Prakan province, south of Bangkok. It was such a good introduction to Thai culture that I was happy when Nee suggested I join her and a group of friends making a day visit for the Makha Bucha holiday yesterday.

Muang Boran consists of over 100 exhibits. Many are scaled (but still large) replicas of ancient monuments. If you have time to travel around Thailand you can see the real thing in full size. If you only have a day you can see these replicas at Muang Boran. In fact, it would be a challenge to see it all and do it justice in a day. MB covers an area of 320 acres. The shape of the property roughly represents a map of Thailand. You can follow a map and find the monuments roughly where they exist in Thailand.

Nee arranged to hire a van for the day which picked us up early in Bangkok. We arrived at MB at about 10 am and didn't leave until just before it closed at 5 pm. I filled my 1GB card on my camera. That's over 400 photos in a day. I've never done that before. Although I admit many were of my friends goofing off. There were two other photographers in the group. One was posing all his friends and clicking madly with his Canon DSLR. He seemed to have unlimited memory and battery power. I was content to capture them in the act of posing rather than posed. My third battery had almost run out when we left Samut Prakan just after 6 pm.

It takes time to process all these photos. Keep an eye on my flickr page and you'll see them appear gradually over the next few weeks. There's already a few on my grandchildren's blog.

If visitors to Thailand read this, I recommend you arrange some form of transport for getting around Muang Boran. There are several options available to visitors and you won't get far on foot.

Labels: art, Asia, camera, flickr, Muang Boran, Nee, photography, thailand, travel