The Photography of Dr. Jeff Harper

A RAMBLE IN FOUR PARTS

Part Three: Thai Farm Museum and Lemon Temple

My friend John Stiles and I set off in my old truck up the road to the rural province of Suphanburi, to the northwest of Bangkok.  As usual, we had a vague idea, from a tertiary Google search, of what we wanted to see, but no particular plan: we would ramble.  We would eventually see several amazing Buddhist temple complexes, a Buffalo park, and a Farm Museum.  We never 'found' the actual town of Suphanburi, but we didn't care: we had a grand adventure rambling about the rural Thai countryside.

Never trust your GPS completely.  After a wonderful stop at a river Wat we decided we wanted to see the Farm Museum, so we punched it into the GPS and took off.  20 minutes later we arrived at the spot on the GPS map and found the Lemon Temple instead.  Where is the Farm Museum, we thought?

We walked around a little and could not find anything like a Farm Museum. Instead we found an interesting 'spiritual center' - a kind of Buddhist temple - and walked in to ask where the Farm Museum was.

Whoever is making donations to this temple must be expecting large crowds.  Beautiful wooden pews.  John found someone to ask . . . they said we were about 20K from the Farm Museum.  Oops!  Wrong place . . . but still interesting.

I walked around a bit and went up some stairs to find a locked door.  Fortunately there was a window I could rest my camera on to take this HDR shot of the temple upper floor.  The raised platform to the left is where the monks would sit and chant.

We spent 10 minutes at the Lemon Temple, found the lemon bushes, and left for Farm Museum.

The entrance to the Lifestyle and Spirit of Thai Farmers Learning Center looked promising.  And we were hungry.

Fortunately they had an eatery where we could get a bowl of noodle soup.  They also had a cafe where we had a fine cup of coffee.

The museum had a fine recreated historical rural shop.

Historical store.

A very beautiful space.

Strangely, not all the items on the display shelves were old and antique.

It was a very beautiful place with covered walkways.

There were fields to show different types of rice.

Trimming the rice fields . . . only at the museum.

Flowers in the rice fields.

The center is designed to educate farmers about farming methods, and to educate the public about farming in general.  None of the visitors we saw looked like farmers.

A child's teeter-totter made of parts from an old buffalo farm cart.  You hate to see these old items repurposed this way.

It was interesting to watch workers reassemble an old Thai style teak house.

There  were a few small exhibits of random 'old stuff.'  This old Suzuki and bicycle in a grass shack was particularly beautiful.  We headed on to our next destination:  The Hell Garden (Wat Phai Rong Wua) of Suphanburi.