Friday, July 31, 2009

District office in the house of museums

A very interesting museum in the western outskirts of Bangkok is the House of Museums (บ้านพิพิธภัณฑ์), where lots of everyday items of the 1950s and 1960s are collected and displayed. All floors are interesting, but when I reached the top floor to my pleasant surprise I found myself in front of the workplace of a district officer.

The place is titled ที่ว่าการอำเภอสีหนคร (Thi Wa Gan Amphoe Si Nakhon, district office Si Nakhon), a totally fictional name however. On the desk it has an old typewriter, in the wardrobe to the right several items from the work of the officer - most notable the gun and two issues of the thesaphiban magazine, the official magazine for the administration. On the wall it as a map and some other fitting illustrations, as well as some official documents which looked a bit like the announcements in the Royal Gazette - but as I could not read them I have no idea what they are actually are about.

The exhibits are actually not completely contemporary - the map on the wall still shows French Indochina so was from before 1949, the thesaphiban magazine was from 1953, and on the desk itself was a Siam statistical yearbook of 1969 (which I had that one in my library as well). But it gives a nice nostalgic view on how these offices looked like in the past - even though I have taken photos of quite a lot of the buildings already, if I recall correctly I only was inside two of them yet, and obviously they did not look like the one in the museum anymore.

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