The first set of pictures in this post is of Jim Thompson's neo-traditional Thai house.
Jim Thompson rebuilt the silk industry in Thailand from nothing- a better retelling of his story is at the following URL
http://www.cpamedia.com/history/jim_thompson_thailand_silk_king/
His house sits in a crowded mid city location of Bangkok along the Saen Saep canal. In the days when he was there , the FRONT door was open to the canal and he faced the Muslim section of Bangkok across the canal where he went every day to coax the weavers there into producing various products for him.
This is interesting stuff since all of the silk growing is in the northeast of Thailand- and it was mostly a cottage industry. All the raw silk- which is quite rough and feels almost like catgut in consistency was sent to Bangkok for finishing and weaving. Only a limited number of people in villages still died and wove the silk. This is the part that confuses me because people love raw silk- but the stuff they gave us to look at was very coarse in consistency- so there must be a few finishing steps i am missing. Somehow the Bangkok industry faded away and took the growers income with it.
It tuns out that in 1947 he loved the native Laotian style weaves of the villages- because they were all bumpy and textured, but the only master weavers of anything were in the Ban Krua section of Bangkok- and were Muslim. In order to rebuild the Thai silk industry he put the two together- and he made it all work by keeping the Thai silk industry an artisan industry with lots of little home shops producing the silks.
At any rate we approached his house form the sky train stop near it. The current approach to his house is actually the back door since it is by land. The grounds are beautiful, and now they have a first class restaurant on the grounds and are totally set up for tourist tours in many languages.
All of the exotic flower shots in previous posts are from Jim Thompson's garden.
Walking through the garden- one can see some of his out buildings
A shot of th eopen air interior of the ground floor of one of hte main buildings
Shot from the balcony down into the courtyard
Darlene standing at the entrance ot one of the garden paths
The main dining area of the restaurant. A whole wall fish tank.
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