Ayutthaya Thailand Boat Museum

Most people visit Ayutthaya Thailand because it was an ancient capital of the Kingdom of Siam. It’s extremely pretty and historically significant enough to credit the UNESCO World Heritage Site honor it earned in 1991.

We went there to kill three days while waiting for our Chinese visas to be processed at the embassy in Bangkok.

By the time we got to Ayutthaya my kids were wat-ed out. In fairness, we were at the end of an eight week tour of South East Asia and they had had their fill of temples and ruins and then some. That said, as any respectable parent knows, expecting two children to sit quietly in a hotel room for three days is asking the impossible so I proposed a walk.
I believe I said: “C’mon, let’s go explore the ruins, it’ll be fun”.
Judging by their reaction, you’d have thought I said: “C’mon, let’s go replace all your fillings”.

I won’t paint a picture of what happened next, you’ve been there, it’s not fun.

An hour later we were inspecting crumbling 16th-century wats, my boys both exercising their rights to practice their world-champion scowling skills. So I took a different tack. Earlier, we’d passed this street sign:

“Let’s go check out that Boat Museum”.
The brothers Murphy, possibly figuring that boats had to be at least marginally better than wats, agreed.

I haven’t found a mention of this Boat Museum in any guide book. Finding and visiting it was the very definition of being sidetracked by kids while traveling. The museum takes up most of the floor space of this master carver’s home. The boats themselves are works of art, the dioramas help describe more clearly the different boat types and their uses.

Some examples of the different styles of boats on display at the museum:

As I said, the owner and his wife welcomed us into their home and proudly showed us the boats and boat models in their collection – and then posed for a photo