Exploring Thailand’s Ancient Cities

If you love history, visiting a museum is one thing. Exploring an old city’s architecture is another. But how about a private museum completely outside that is full of ancient building replicas? That is exactly what you can find just south of Bangkok. MuangBoran The Ancient City is known by many names, but is often used as Ancient City. This private museum was founded in the 1960s and continued to be cared for over the decades; opened to the public to show a variety of the architecture, culture, and history that can be found across Thailand throughout the centuries. Being one of the largest outdoor museums with over 100 buildings on the premises, the Ancient City is more than impressive at the scale and amount of work put into these replicas.

When looking up things to do in Bangkok, the Ancient City kept popping up, and even though it’s not technically Bangkok, the train makes it an easy day trip. Or taxi. Where we were that day we were prioritizing time so we took a Grab taxi down since it was hard for us to get to the train station at the time. But coming back we took the train after getting a taxi for the ten-minute drive to Kheha Station (we struggled to book one on an app leaving, but there were other taxis dropping passengers off at the entrance so we grabbed one of them before they left).

 I found online a few places to prebook tickets beforehand but wanted to wait; so after arriving we saw the price in person was double so we bought them while in line haha (we found our tickets on Klook and Trazy) so I would recommend online tickets instead when going. It was pretty warm and we only had a certain among of time, so we decided to rent a golf cart, which made it quite nice to drive around the whole area and not have to rush or get burned by the sun from being out. Which made it a fun experience zooming around the premises and feeling like we were lost but it was a quiet area. Some buildings were closed off, but we saw most of the replicas despite the construction and got through it all before leaving.

What can you see in the Ancient City?

• The Pavilion of the Enlightened.

Number 110 on their travel map, this one was my favorite architectural building. It felt like it could have been a magical fantasy kingdom walking along the pavilions over the water. If it had been the only building I had seen I think the trip would have been worth it, the layout was so detailed with the arches and trellises. 

• Sanphet Prasat Palace, Ayutthaya

#27 The palace by the water and being accessed by the bridges gave a beautiful reflection view and I was so impressed by the roof design (Thai roofs are really cool). 

• Sala of Ten Reincarnations 

#100 The Thai pavilion bridge was located over a slow river with its detailed architecture and design on the roofs apparently depicting the story of Buddha’s reincarnations. It was super calm and peaceful on that side of the museum, and right by the Sumeru Mountain (the giant fish around the temple) but it was closed when we were there, so we only looked at it from afar. 

• Old Market Town 

#10 is set up as an old market, as the name suggests, the town is rebuilt to feel like you could be wandering down a small town, and inside are different shops where you can even rent traditional Thai clothes, which many people there were also doing. (i didn’t capture a picture of this one since I was driving the golf cart haha)

The museum had sooooo many buildings and areas to go to, but those were some of the top places we saw. 

Location: 

Samut Prakan Ancient City

296/1 Sukhumvit Road, Bang Pu Mai, Mueang Samut Prakan District, Samut Prakan 10280, Thailand