Samut Prakan

Samut Prakan is a city just south of Bangkok on the coast. I spent a day there first visiting the world’s largest Crocodile farm. There are crocodiles of all sort of sizes from ones still in the egg to new born ones to ones 4 meters about 12 feet long. This is one of the larger ones.

After walking around and seeing all the crocodiles I saw a crocodile show where it started with 2 men pulling different crocodiles around by there tails. Then they get them to snap there mouths shut into a stick they had. The sound was made by the mouth shutting was surprising loud. After this they would open a crocodile’s mouth and put their hand and arm into the mouth. After doing their arms for a while they stuck their heads in the crocodile’s mouth.

Well if they can do it why shouldn’t I?

OK so they did it with live ones and I did it with stuff ones but I can now check that little box on my life list that I stuck my head in a crocodile’s mouth.

After going to the elephant show and walking around the zoo part of the farm I went to the complex called the ancient city. This is a large area that has reproductions of different things throughout Thailand. The way I got around to the different things to see them was via a bike that was free with the admission. The only problem with this is I think the reason the bikes were free is because they where about worthless. The bike was like most of the bikes I have been on in Asia and made for someone much shorter than me but this one only had front brakes and it at one time had gears but the cables to change gears had been removed. Even with the bike being worthless it has been a long time since I have been on a bike and I really enjoyed being on a bike once again.

It was interesting seeing the recreations of places I had been to on my trip through Thailand. The one thing that impressed me the most is the one site I wanted to see in Thailand/Cambodia but will not see on this trip. I really was interested in seeing the Angkor ruins at Prasat Khao Phra Wihan. It is a little bit out of the ways and it is still being debated to which country it belongs. A major politician has just recently been forced to resign over something he did concerning Prasat Khao Phra Wihan. It currently is in Cambodia but only accessible via Thailand. Even though I wanted to see this site I could not find a tour to this site and I did not want to do it on my own and have to haggle over the cost of transport since it is not served by public transport. There is also a double entry fee (one Thai and one Cambodian) and a fee for border crossing. Due to all of this it was really nice to see the recreations of the site but I still want to see these ruins on the edge of the cliff.

I also enjoyed the recreation of the floating market, which I also did not go visit.