Jim Thompson House Museum in Bangkok

Description and is it worth a visit

Jim Thompson House Museum (Jim Thompson House) is one of the most famous and visited museums in Bangkok. It is impossible to determine the theme unambiguously, since architecture, nature, history, and culture are mixed here.

It is believed that the museum was founded by American businessman Jim Thompson in the middle of the last century, but this is not entirely true. On his own initiative and at his own expense, he collected 6 old traditional teak houses in Ayutthaya and Bangura, moved them to the center of Bangkok, and assembled one house from them, where he began to live. He also kept a collection of works of art in the house, and allegedly allowed everyone to visit it and inspect the collection, but it was not yet a museum. Only after the mysterious disappearance of a businessman in Malaysia in 1967, the house was transferred to the John Thompson Foundation, after which a museum was founded here.

The house recreated the atmosphere that was during the life of Jim Thompson, exhibited works of art. There is a small beautiful garden around the house. When visiting, you can freely walk around the garden and inspect the houses from the outside, and it's free. But you can only go inside if you buy a ticket and are accompanied by a guide who is "given" to you with a ticket. After buying a ticket, you will need to wait a little (usually no more than 20 minutes) for the next group to gather, after which you will be guided through the garden and house, and will be told in detail about its history and the life of a businessman. Guided tours are available only in English and French. The whole tour takes about 20 minutes, after which you can already inspect the houses yourself, but you can no longer go inside.

Strict rules apply when visiting: before entering the house, you need to take off your shoes; it is absolutely impossible to touch anything, take pictures inside too; before starting the tour, all things will have to be handed over to the storage room, even the smallest bags.

Honestly, without the guide's story, visiting this place is not interesting at all, and if you do not perceive spoken English or French well, you will not get much pleasure from visiting the museum house, so you can skip it.

Friends, we remind you that it is much more interesting to get acquainted with the sights of Bangkok with the help of excursions, and therefore we advise you to look at options with online booking and reviews on these excursion aggregators:

• 📷 Search for excursions in Bangkok on Sputnik8.com
• 📷 Search for excursions in Bangkok on Tripster.ru
• 📷 Search for excursions in Bangkok on Tezeks.com
• 📷 Search for excursions in Bangkok on Trip.com
• 📷 Search for excursions in Bangkok on GetYourGuide