The Teak Palace

The last place we visited was The Teak Palace. This was built by King Rama V, who served at roughly the same time as Abraham Lincoln, although he lived until 1910.

He is the king from the play “Anna and the King” and the later musical “The King and I”, although he looks nothing like Yul Brenner.

This was another of those places that they took your possessions, made you leave your shoes and passed you through a metal detector before patting you down to make sure your pockets are relatively empty.

For those of you who’ve been to The Biltmore House in Asheville, NC, this is not quite as big and opulent, but is definitely from the same era. The furnishings are very European looking, except there are lots of elephant tusks.

The amazing thing here, though, is that the house is wooden – teak wood, to be exact – and is painted in a variety of colors.  It has no nails, but was instead constructed entirely using wooden pegs.  This was fortunate, because it was originally constructed as a summer palace in the Gulf of Siam in 1868.  In 1893, though, confrontations with French colonists made it too dangerous for the royal family to occupy, so it was deconstructed just like a bunch of tinker-toys and moved to Bangkok.

The king only used it for a short time -- from 1901 to 1906, and then members of the royal family used it off and on until 1935.  It was then abandoned until the current queen got a decorating bug about the time of the Thai Bicentennial in 1982 and had it restored as a museum.

Its importance is readily apparent to anyone touring the 30 rooms available for viewing -- it sported the first electric light bulb and the first indoor plumbing in Thailand.
Rama V is largely credited with making Thailand a modern nation. He was educated abroad, established European-style universities, and promoted education and the arts in his country.

He apparently had some health issues as well, because he built a “man cave” of a smaller palace just across the yard, on stilts over a pond. This was designed to improve airflow and make the place cooler when he ran fevers. We weren’t allowed in that part of the building.

One of the most interesting stories about King Rama V and the United States is that he corresponded with the President. Initially, he was writing to James Buchannan, but because of the length of time it took the letter to arrive, Lincoln was in office when it got there.

The King, upon learning that the United States had no elephants, offered to send three from his personal collection as “breeding stock” to be used as beasts of burden and populate the United States with elephants. Lincoln politely declined the offer, probably thinking how much of a mess it would be to have to clean up after them on the White House lawn. 

After all, he had a lot on his plate already without having to deal with Elephants digging in the flower beds.

Besides, had he accepted the offer, think of the mess we’d be in. We already have enough trouble with deer being hit on the highway.

Imagine what it’d be like if Dumbo was crossing!