Vimanmek and the Royal Throne Hall

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The largest palace of its kind, Vimanmek Mansion is made entirely of teak wood. Teak is widely used in Thai construction, or at least it was until the advent of concrete, and is a sturdy building material. In fact, at The Siam we have four Thai teak houses which are going to make up out signature Thai restaurant Chon and our premier villa Connie’s Cottage. Not to give too much away pre-opening but these houses are rammed with history, having been sourced by Jim Thompson himself and carted back up the river from Autthaya.

Now where was I before I got sidetracked? Yes, Vimanmek, the world’s largest teakwood mansion. The mansion was the first permanent residence built in the Dusit Garden by King Rama V after her return from Europe. The Dusit Garden is across Ratchavithee Rd from the Dusit Zoo. You can enter the garden from a number of entrances that I saw, you can enter from the Ananda Samakhon Throne Hall, which is a beautiful, white marble palace done in the Italian Renaissance and Neo Classic style. You can also enter the garden from the Dusit Zoo as I mentioned as well as from the rear parking lot, which is where most of the buses drop off their precious cargo of tour groups. If you are coming from the Zoo-side entrance then you have to stop in to the Royal Elephant Museum. The small building houses a collection of artifacts from different dynasties, all of them elephant related. From curved tusks to ivory-handled daggers the display is very interesting and certainly a nice way to start off the day, it is also very quiet so you can enjoy the museum in peace before heading to the attractions that are Vimanmek and the Throne Hall.

Strolling through the garden is incredibly relaxing, you don’t get to walk between well kept lawns and hanging branches too often in Bangkok and walking along the paths that looped lazily around ponds and hills while under the shady canopy of an assortment of trees is incredibly relaxing. It was easy to forget that I’d not eaten all morning and it was getting close to one in the afternoon. If you haven’t eaten before going don’t worry, there’s a pretty nice little food court towards the back where you can find some nice Thai dishes.

As we made our way towards the mansion we were the only two on the path but as soon as we crossed a bridge on the last stretch to the entrance we ran right into a throng of chattering tourists, all completely laden with camera equipment. I’ve never seen so many straps, lenses and other bits and bobs hanging from such small people, you’d think that with all the working out they must do lifting those clunky cameras that they’d have bulging muscles. We quickly bypassed the crowd and went into the reception area. My girlfriend was wearing shorts and a thin-strapped top so we were directed towards the sarong and shirt rental desk where she was given what I firmly believe is the most horrible Hawaiian shirt I have ever seen. XXL and bright orange there is no way anyone would want to walk off with it but still, the 400B deposit had to be paid. Before entering the actual mansion grounds you have to first put your phones and camera into a locker, put it all in the first time because it’s 20B for a coin-drop locker and you get frisked twice so having to go back and pay another 20B just because you forgot your video camera was in your pocket is a real pain.

The mansion grounds are very neat and afford a great view of the outside of the mansion. Before entering the mansion itself you are directed to a locker room underneath the mansion where you must take off your shoes and leave them in a pigeonhole. Finally, after what seemed like ages, we were able to walk up the steps to the mansion where we were again given directions, this time to follow a tour group that had just started and was moving along at a painfully slow pace. Every now and then though, the group behind us would start to catch up and our guide would suddenly skip a room or two just to stay ahead, it was funny to watch this little competition. We began to get a bit impatient with the tour though, there were people on all sides and we couldn’t hear the guide so found an opportune moment while he was concentrating on where the other tour guide was and slipped away to walk at our own leisure.

The inside of the mansion is beautiful. The scale of the place is breathtaking, hallways and corridors lined with room after room full of beautiful “do not sit” furniture and collections of swords, rifles, art and a myriad of other objects. One room was lined with horns, antlers and heads of different animals; one skull in particular caught my attention. It must have been a meter in length, teeth longer than my feet and menacing grin on it’s bleach-white face, the must have been one seriously badass crocodile.
Wandering through the corridors with bare feet felt really nice, the feel of the wooden floors and the different carpets in the different rooms giving each its own character so to speak. My musings were interrupted though when we ran into another tour group, this one in Chinese I think, the tour guide seemed like quite the tyrant and her entire group appeared cowed by her. As you can imagine we had even less inclination to stick with them, but the guide was moving along as such a pace that we had trouble passing them and ended up neck and neck with the guide, the looks she gave us could have shattered crystal. Finally we managed to escape into the piano room where they were playing something on an automatic piano, whenever I see one of those I always think of something from a ghost movie, just waiting to see a translucent lady pass through the wall.

We emerged from the mansion before we’d even realized that we had reached the end, it sort of looped around, up, around and then back down so that you get a bit disorientated before shooting you back into the lobby where you first started. The dragon-lady was hot on our heels though so we didn’t waste any time collecting our shoes and heading back to the locker where our stuff was. We were told that only once you had done the tour could you then go back into the mansion garden and take photos. I took a few but there were so many people with their serious, Hubble-telescope-type cameras, that I felt rather emasculated so after a few snaps we headed off back into the gardens towards the Throne Hall.
The Ananda Smakhom Throne Hall, as I mentioned earlier, was built in the Italian Renaissance and Neo Classic style. King Chulalongkorn, Rama V, commissioned the hall in 1907 to replace the reception hall built by Rama IV that had stood there previously. A large dome surrounded by six smaller domes tops the hall in a manner that, when viewed at the right time, can look incredibly dramatic with the greenish dome and the white marble backed by looming clouds, which is how it was when we went.
Inside the Throne Hall you can easily forget that you are in Thailand. The interior is plush, marbled and all together, Western. There is a vastness to the place that you only really feel when you enter a cathedral and as your eyes follow the thickset pillars up to the painted interior of the domes you could almost think that you are in fact staring at the painted roof of a cathedral in Europe, until you realize that the paintings you’re looking at are a depiction of the history of the Chakri Dynasty.

Once again though, we were not the only ones around, the beauty of the throne hall was somewhat thwarted by the milling people that littered its corridors. People unsure of what to do without their cameras, as I was. As in all these places, photography is strictly prohibited and in this case, I didn’t feel that taking a sneaky photo would go down quite as smoothly as it had in the National Museum. For anyone coming to Bangkok, I would say, as I’ve said about all the places I’ve written about, that the Dusit Garden is well worth going to and visiting the Vimanmek Mansion and Ananda Samakhom Throne Hall is a must, but I would also advise that you get there early in the morning or later on in the afternoon after the crowds have thinned out. Vimanmek is open from 9:00am – 4:00pm. Tickets are 100B and include all the sites in the Dusit Garden.

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Photos

Chinese Pavilion
A Chinese pavilion under renovation in the gardens

Vimanmek Mansion
One of the wings of the mansion

Vimanmek Grounds
The mansion from within the grounds

The Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall
The Throne Hall before Ananda was built

Comments

[Xiomara]

It sounds lovely Tarks! The description in the beginning makes me excited to see what the Siam will be like when it opens, and I wish you had been able to snap pictures inside the throne hall. Such beautiful places you visit! :)