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Ancient City Samut Prakan Bangkok Thailand

The Ancient City's beautifully landscaped gardens mimic the shape of Thailand, and feature replicas of the county's most significant landmarks and monuments. Each of the over 116 structures is in their proper geographic position, and include palaces, bell towers, pavilions, temples, halls, floating markets, Buddha images and shrines

http://www.ihavewings.com/travels/ 2005/01/my_weekend_take.html

Samut Prakan
On Saturday, I headed to Samut Prakan which is a small city about 30 km southeast (?) of Bangkok - for those of you in Boston, it's sort of like Bangkok's Lynn (i.e. "Boston without the good parts."). I took a bus out there and quickly learned that as soon as you leave Bangkok city limits all Roman script is gone and the street signs are only in Thai scrawl. Needless to say, that makes getting around (and especially knowning when to get off your bus a bit of a challenge!). With a little help from the bus driver (due to the fact that I probably looked completely helpless), I managed to end up in central Samut Prakan, an area called Pak Nam. After wandering the streets for a little while, I found a sawngthaew (basically a pickup truck with two rows of seats in the bed) to take me out to Muang Boran, or "The Ancient City."

Muang Boran was the main purpose of my trip. It is a 300 acre museum/park that is roughly in the shape of the country of Thailand. It contains scaled-down copies of most of the kingdom's most famous temples, buldings, statues, etc. I thought it would be an interesting way to introduce myself to everything Thailand had to offer beyond the confines of Bangkok. And it was. I rented a bike and spent most of the day riding all throughout the park. There were no barriers or gates, so you could ride everywhere and walk around and climb all the buildings. The buildings themselves were quite large (in general), although I imagine the originals are even more magnificnet. All in all, it was a nice experience, but one I would probably skip if my time in Thailand was limited. After all, seeing the temples at Muang Boran is a bit like going to Las Vegas and saying that you have seen the Eiffel Tower