Bang Pa-In Palace

So I had hired a car to take me out to the ancient ruins at Ayutthaya.  On the way out to the ruins was Thailand's old royal palace.  Since it was on the way, I thought I might as well stop in for a look.

It was a confusing experience.

Modern Thailand has become an incredible mix of old and new, hyper-modern and crumbling-poverty, Eastern and Western.

It seems as though this phenomenon wasn't such a recent thing.

The palace grounds were a mismatched collection of buildings from different eras and styles.  There were traditional Thai style pagodas, Chinese style palaces, continental European style buildings and bridges, some very English looking houses...

It did feel a little bit amusement park like.

The buildings on an individual level were all beautiful and quite unique.  When you were up close to them or looking at them in isolation, you could see the care and effort that had been placed into their construction.

All together in one single spot, it was far more confusing.

I tried to look at it all from a different perspective.  Rather than considering all of these buildings as a strange mash up of different styles, it was probably better to look at it from the wider context of Thai history.

Thailand was one of the few countries in the world that was able to escape the reach of European colonisation.  Throughout the late 1700s through to the 20th century, Thailand was able to remain proudly free of foreign takeover and was even able to secure its borders as an independent country.

This collection of buildings was probably best seen as a monument to that success.  Foreign powers came and went, but rather than take over, they effectively gifted these buildings to Thailand, either directly or through some form of cultural exchange.  It may still look strange without the context, but for Thai people it should probably be viewed with an enormous sense of pride in their country.