three.

we get carted around for the first half of the day. fun.

temple of the dawn.
magnificent.
to take into account how the builders make you look up, to see their towers flush against the sky.
the blue is so stark against them, it is BREATH-TAKING. the sense of space is just, unexplainably expansive. Especially at the base of the main structure itself.









in the compound you forget that you're in a city of skyscrapers and towers. all you see is the sky, and the towers of course. the towers. they go way up high.

down the chao praya river. the boat lulls you to sleep, then some water splashes and jolts you. it's quite rude. anyhow. houses line up down the bank, slanting on stilts, constructed with corrugated metal (zinc?) sheets and wood. i can't decide if these are slumps or not. despite their run down condition the houses are neatly arranged, one next to the other. some have courtyards facing the water, their gardens of pots of flowers giving the overall scene some badly needed colour.





the grand palace. and how could it not come with its own temple. i suppose that would be a Thai's ultimate luxury. Or a Buddhist's, at least. which most Thai people are. but, whatever.







walls here tell a story, a myth. every bit of them un-spared from the paint brush of the past. such detail.



the buildings within the compound are of traditional thai architecture. no nails or screws and all. jigsaw fits of wood. here the beams are painted, little inside is left unadorned.



like the temple of dawn this place brings one back to an old world of carved temple walls and golden tiled structures, where worship was put into workmanship, worship of their Buddha and their king. if one can ignore the snap-happy tourists, that is. which is really quite hard because there are hordes of them.

the last stop, Mr Jim Thompson's house. almost all the traditional forms of putting a thai house together are used here (i could hyperventilate), with some western concepts in the spatial composition.





a collection of techniques and methods used to create the typical thai house, all in Mr. Thompson's (not so) humble abode. a reminder of Luis Barragan. the use of a tradition and its methods of building, with a modern arrangement of space. this core idea, it seems, is one of the preserving factors in these two mens' legacies.