I am quite aware, if I may say, that it is not my place (in status and society and people and life) to write a post about this beautiful park nestled along Ploenchit Road, Lumpini, Pathumwan in Bangkok, but might I possibly politely say that, from a visitor's point of view, from a tourist's point of view, this lush green park was such a sanctuary amidst all the modern-day cacophony of traffic noise and city buzz that even till now, three months after, her stillness, and her timelessness, still- in my memories- speak to me.
The Nai Lert Group website tells me that Nai Lert Park Heritage Home was built in 1915. Designed by Lert Sresthaputra, it was his permanent residence shared with his beloved wife, and his daughter.
The Nai Lert family home was opened to the public in 1915 and was the first western-style park in Siam. For three generations the Nai Lert family lived in the house until 2012 when they decided to convert the residence into a heritage property.
The Nai Lert Park Heritage Home was turned into a museum which today is open to the community and the general public from Wednesday to Sunday at selected times.
I must admit, it is with a bit of a quiet regret that I did not know this prior to walking through the park four, five times enroute from the Movenpick Hotel to the TOPS supermarket at Central Chidlom.
I would have visited the museum otherwise.
After all I am the sort who gets fascinated by lives and living patterns of people past and present, and I can spend hours wandering about in museums of all kinds.
More than that, however, it be living spaces that fascinate me.
To me they speak a lot about personality, character and living choice of an individual, and there is no living space that is too cluttered, too maximalist, too monochrome, minimalist or confusing.
Glad I be when a living space tells of living and life.
Glad I be too when a living space shares (with the rest of the world) just what they are, what they be, and what they hope to be remembered by.
Nai Lert Park Heritage Home is, I believe, the latter.
Visiting the home, I think, would be akin to opening a window, nay, maybe even a portal, to life in the city and the country over a century ago. On the walls I believe there would be pictures of Bangkok in the decades past. Then here and there arranged prettily all around the rooms there would be little day-to-day items (now artefacts) that they had used and which they had decided to preserve for everyone to appreciate and learn. We might have gotten a glimpse into how life in the family home was like. We might even have gotten a glimpse of the family members themselves through the photographs, and not just of themselves, but also those of their loved ones, and their associates, perhaps.
Truth be told I had wondered a little about the houses, and the place.
Because, as you can see from these pictures, the place was lush, green, immaculate, and quietly beautiful.
I had not dared to take too close a picture of the houses.
(Just in case the family might still be living here)
But even from a distance it was so meaningful, and beautiful.
Here I was, in the heart of this bustling city, a few steps away from Central Chidlom and Central Embassy, standing in the middle of a perfectly mown, perfectly manicured park amongst century-old trees.
Don't think that I'm exaggerating, but a more sensitive soul might feel like they were stepping back in time.
What was it like, I wonder, for the family to come down these steps in the cool of the night to sit in their own garden and be this close to grass and trees and shrubs and flowers and plants?
Were there crickets?
And what was it like, I wonder, to wake up at dawn of first light and hear the leaves rustling in the early morning breeze?
Were there birds?
Did they sing?
It does take a fair bit of concerted effort to keep a living space so timeless and so pristine even as the world moves on, old patterns change, and the city develops.
Perhaps it may be a bit presumptuous of me, but I wonder, too, what it was like to dwell in a space built from 1915- during the First World War, mind- and watch, through the decades, as urbanization took over, as structures, concrete buildings, and glass-fronted skyscrapers began to surround.
It's beautiful how they've kept the park as it is.
It's beautiful too how they've commercialized it with a couple of specially curated restaurants in some of the houses.
You get to appreciate authentic home cooking Thai cuisine, you get to appreciate European flavors, and you get to appreciate heritage Thai coffee.
I have no idea what it is to try holding on to old ways versus new.
I too have no idea what it is to try denying old ways to move on to the new.
But I do know what it is like to step in from one moment of the present-day world into another moment of a world sometime past.
I felt it once- a long time ago.
In a little way, may I quietly say that I felt it here, a wee bit, again?