Rajapruek, The Royal Park

There is a royal garden located within a couple of miles from our house that we had the chance to explore over the weekend.  The garden was constructed in 2006 to honor the King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej (ภูมิพลอดุลยเดช).  It opened in honor of his 80th birthday and 60th anniversary of ascension as king.  The king has been very instrumental in improving life for the people of Thailand through agriculture, so this is a fitting way to honor his work. In the middle of the park is a commemorative temple/museum for the king. The upstairs has artistic depictions of his travels through each region of Thailand working with the people. The basement level is a museum of his life, which shows him as a true renaissance man, composing jazz music, building and racing a sailboat, translating books into Thai, painting a variety of styles of artwork, etc...

The park did not have many visitors, so we had huge sections of the park all to ourselves. We must have walked a few miles all in all, because we kept discovering new sections of the park that we just had to check out... These ivy clad music men were worth a moment of reflection. 

There was a pond with giant lilies that were pretty incredible!

We weren't quite sure what to make of these statue groupings in a couple of different places along a lakewere just lifelike enough to be slightly disconcerting, and intriguing at the same time.

One of our favorite parts was the bonsai section. These trees look a little bigger than they actually were, but there were a lot of different shapes and types of bonsai!

It may not feel much like the Christmas that we are used to, but there sure were a lot of poinsettias... So with that, Merry Christmas from Thailand!