The Thai House
The tranquility of a rural setting and the old ways of the Thai people may seem a far cry from Bangkok, but this city of ‘everything all the time’ is also home to a few serene pockets of history amidst the high-rises. Tucked in between the taller edifices of an urban skyline you can find an occasional treasure. Traditional Thai houses made of teak and other hardwoods are scattered throughout Bangkok and with a little effort you can step back in time for an hour or so and discover another face of the Kingdom’s capital.
Old-style Thai dwellings vary architecturally depending on the region. For the untrained eye, these differences may be unnoticeable because the similarities of Thai style are distinct: several structures raised atop wooden columns, unusual ornamentations on the gables, ornate decorative moldings along the eaves, wood carved lintels, teakwood walls, and a prefabricated design allowing homeowners the freedom to assemble, disassemble or reassemble their houses at any location.
But there are differences as well. The Siam Society’s Kamthieng House Museum and the Mom Ratchawong Kukrit Pramoj (Mr. Kukrit) compound are two excellent examples of traditional Thai homes that come from different parts of the Kingdom: the north and the central plains, respectively. Though similar in many respects, these homes also offer some interesting contrasts.
Kamthieng House
Back in 1904, a group of Thais and foreigners wishing to preserve the history and culture of the Kingdom formed the Siam Society. The foundation’s rules included the intent to create an ethnological museum. Almost 60 years later the Society acted upon that intent when it acquired the home of Nang Kimhaw Nimmanahaeminda, a Lanna Thai woman from Chieng Mai. The house was built in 1848 and can be found today on the Society’s property along Asoke Road.
Kamthieng House Museum, named after Nang Kimhaw’s great-grandmother, is a superb example of a northern Thai style home. The entire compound is made of two primary units and sits atop 36 teak pillars. It includes the main house in two units, with covered veranda, and a separate kitchen. Along a raised walkway beyond the balcony stands a third structure which houses the granary.
There are several distinct features that illustrate Kamthieng House’s northern origins. The most obvious is the walls which slant outward as they rise from floor to high-peaked roof edge. This gives a wide and slightly squat appearance to the house. The second obvious indicator can be found on the roof peaks that are decorated with flame-like carvings called galae. These V-shaped ornaments extend upward toward the sky from the highest point of each end of the roof. In contrast, the low ends of the roof do not rise up in decorative finials (flame-like points), but are left plain. The effect of these features in combination is a shape some have compared to a buffalo. The galae represent the animal’s horns while the walls which broaden as they rise look like a buffalo’s broad chest. The house “stands” upon pillars representing the buffalo’s legs.
A fourth feature of a northern home, and one which cannot be seen on first glance, is the specially designed doorway lintel or ham yon. These wooden embellishments are intended to protect the owners of the house, and their powers are said to grow stronger with time. Ham yon means, essentially: testicle power. The phrase is derived from both the old Lanna language of the north and Indian Sanskrit sources. Ham means testicle in Lanna, and yon is from the Sanskrit yantra which means magical diagram or symbol. Despite its rather explicit phrasing, the ham yon themselves do not resemble their namesake. The carved panels include floral motifs and occasional mythic figures. Several fine examples are displayed beside the doorway to Kamthieng’s main home structure.
The greater Chieng Mai region was once a part of the Lanna Kingdom, a region stretching as far north as Luang Prabang in Laos. Lanna Thais are new additions to Thailand, their Kingdom merging with the Central Thai Kingdom of Siam during the nineteenth century. Lanna Thais differ in their kinship systems, diet and dialect from central Thais. As an ethnological museum, then, the primary purpose of the Kamthieng House is to illustrate some of the traditional belief systems of the Lanna people. The museum includes a number of informative displays that manage to convey a sense of Lanna life, including a great deal of detail on ritual and spirit worship practices.
The most important part of any Lanna household historically and even today is the ancestral altar, called a hing phi. The hing phi is where the grandfather and grandmother spirits or phi phu ya of the house reside, and propitiating them is an important part of life in Lanna society. Their culture is matrilineal, meaning property is passed down through the female line and the senior female of a household has predominant responsibility for maintaining the spiritual integrity of the home. According to Siam Society literature, “Lanna houses were owned and run by women. Upon the death of the matriarch, a house would pass on to the youngest daughter who served as the next generation’s kaw phi or descent group spirit elder.” Even today the kaw phi tradition remains, and it is her responsibility to propitiate the phi phu ya. This important spirit rite is performed once a year and its function is to ask for protection for home and family.
Lanna men had their important rites as well, primary among them being the ritual art of tattooing. A number of tattooing devices are on display at the Kamthieng House, as well as samples of tattoos. These symbols formed magical spells and offered the wearer protection and increased magnetism through geometric diagrams and animal images. It is possible to find Lanna men sporting such tattoos across their chests even today.
A traditional Lanna kitchen will always contain a mae ji fai or mother hearth. It is made of packed earth in one section of the house, atop which fires within a tripod of stones can heat clay pots of food. In the Kamthieng House museum’s separate kitchen house, the mae ji fai takes up the back quarter of the space. Clay pots, baskets and hand-hewn utensils for cooking are hung about the room.
The granary house is dominated by two features: a giant threshing basket and the altar to Mae Kosok the rice goddess. The basket contains a number of spade-like tools woven of bamboo leaf and attached to long poles. These were used by a group in tandem to thresh the rice from their hulls. The altar includes a small image of Mae Kosok, offerings, effigies and symbols woven from bamboo: all intended to call forth an abundant harvest.
Discreetly placed throughout the Kamthieng House Museum are a number of multimedia presentations that manage to add to the ambiance and inform visitors at the same time. Traditional music, rice cultivation chants, and Lanna rituals can be heard or seen in several different areas. A 1987 Ancestral Spirit rite from Lamphang Province is shown in the main house, while ritual chants play in the granary, a cooking film is shown in the kitchen and an excellent 3D animation demonstrating the construction of a traditional Lanna house can be found beneath the main house in yet another exhibit area.
A tour of Kamtieng house with enough time to watch the short films is a great way to get a well rounded summary of Lanna culture, Lanna style and the construction methods of traditional housing.
Mr. Kukrit’s House
Mr. Kukrit’s Heritage Home, found in the financial district of central Bangkok, is an example of a central plains style dwelling. Like the Kamthieng House, the various buildings which make up the compound were dismantled at their original sites and re-assembled on his property. The home is comprised of five separate one-room houses. They are all raised on elevated poles just like their northern counterparts, and are connected by an open veranda.
Over the course of his long life, Mr. Kukrit developed many talents and pursued many passions. He was born in 1911 and lived until the ripe age of 84. He descended from both royal and ministerial lines. At the age of 15 he went to England for his education, eventually receiving an honors degree from Oxford University. Though best known as Thailand’s Prime Minister during the tumultuous years of 1975-1976, Mr. Kukrit was also renowned as a man of letters, writing poetry, prose, fiction and political commentary.
Mr. Kukrit was a scholar of Thai traditional art forms, including architecture. He collected, decorated and maintained his heritage home in the name of cultural preservation, and simply for the pleasure of living there. Artist, scholar, politician, horticulturist, the late Mom Ratchawongse Kukrit Pramoj was truly a renaissance man. His house reflects his diverse and refined tastes while maintaining a welcoming, home-like atmosphere for guests today.
Every one of the structures at Mr. Kukrit’s Heritage Home has its own function, typical of a central Thai house. The northern home, by contrast, is a single, large formation which houses everything but the kitchen and granary under a dual-peaked roof. At Mr. Kukrit’s there are separate houses for bedroom, library, reception room, private sitting area, and family shrine. Unlike the northern style house, the walls of a central plains home taper slightly as they rise, creating a longer, narrower profile. The roof peaks do not finish into flame-like galae but come to a fine, clean point, while roof ends, rather than being unornamented, ascend into simple curved finials, giving a more refined and far less rustic appearance overall.
The bedroom is divided into three sections with wood carved screens as dividers. Though roped off, it is possible to peek in through the doorway for a glimpse of the finely carved panels, well-preserved furniture and antique Buddha images. The library is a two room house with three walls of books, many collected by the owner during his years of study at Oxford. Mr. Kukrit once held meetings with politicians in this house and the main room has a large Chinese table of in-laid Mother of Pearl. A covered veranda at the entryway houses a number of other fine antiques, including an old-style gong used to announce the hour and high quality samples of traditional Indonesian shadow puppets or wayang kulit.
The reception room or “Grandmother’s house” was used to welcome VIP Guests including the royal family. It is the oldest of the buildings on property, dating back almost 200 years. As with all of the five houses, the room contains a beautiful collection of antiques including traditional Thai puppet heads, silver betel nut sets and, impressively, the bed of King Rama II, now used as a decorative altar for Thai figurines. Mr. Kukrit, a member of the extended royal family himself, inherited the bed from his father, who had inherited it from his father, all the way back to the second Chakri King. Proof that this was once the bed of a king is found on the feet. In Thailand, only a king can have five lion toes on the feet of his bed and sure enough, each foot of this historic piece has five distinct toes.
The gardens of the Kukrit house are particularly marvelous and include a collection of small sculpted trees called mai dat. The water sculpture garden connects the entrance pavilion to the main house group, while a much larger, western style garden at the back of the house has an enormous lawn and many fragrant shrubs and trees. In a small pavilion alongside the grass a teacher from the Chidlada Royal School offers local children music lessons on the ranaad a traditional Thai instrument that looks much like an upward curving xylophone. The music and the children’s laughter lend a happy – and very Thai – ambiance to Mr. Kukrit’s beautiful home.
A visit to Mr. Kukrit’s House is a very pleasant experience. The man’s fine taste and penchant for objets d’art make this dwelling almost museum-like. It is considered to be one of the most attractive Thai houses in the country, with house, gardens and decor carefully laid out by Mr. Kukrit to enhance the spirit of the place.
The Kamthieng House Museum is located on the Siam Society property, 121 Asoke Road, Sukhumvit soi 21. Just off the Asoke BTS stop or the Sukhumvit MRT stop. It is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00am to 5:00pm. Contact the Society for more information at (02) 66-6470-7.
M.R. Kukrit Heritage Home can be found off of Sathorn road at 19 Soi Phrapinij and can be easily reached from Sathorn 3 (Soi Suan Plu) or Soi Narathiwas 7 by the Chong Nonsee skytrain stop. Hours are Saturday, Sunday and official holidays from 10:00am to 4:00pm. For more information or to arrange a special tour during weekdays call (02) 286–8185.
