M.R. Kukrit's Heritage Home

The M.R. Kukrit Heritage Home is the house where Mom Rajawongse Kukrit Pramoj lived. The Tourism Authority of Thailand office in Japan titles the page as closed, and still prints hours of 10:00 to 17:00 and a fee of 50 baht for adults and 20 baht for children. It says he was Thailand’s 13th prime minister, and that he worked as a journalist and an actor as well as in politics, with a particular record in the classical dance drama khon. The house, the page says, is a traditional Ayutthaya-style building in teak. The walk it gives is about 15 minutes from BTS Chong Nonsi on the Dark Green Line. The page prints no street address and no district.

The Kukrit Institute, run under the Kukrit 80 Foundation, is a different site. Its about page says the institute at Thung Maha Mek is not far from M.R. Kukrit’s house, which it calls the house in Soi Suan Plu (บ้านซอยสวนพลู). The institute’s own contact address is in Thung Maha Mek, Sathon, Bangkok 10120. Two institute pages even disagree with each other on the institute number: the contact page prints 99/9 Soi Ngam Duphli, and the about page prints 999 Soi Ngam Duphli. Neither number is used here as the house address. No official page names Bang Rak or Khlong Toei. Sathon is the district the institute gives for the area of the Soi Suan Plu house. A house number was not printed.

The institute contact page lists kukritinstitute@gmail.com and telephones 02 286 5385-6 and 099 642 9389, with office hours Monday to Friday 10.00 to 16.00. Those belong to the institute, and the heritage-home page does not repeat them. Because the Japan page both marks the house closed and still prints a fee and hours, both statements are kept.

Photo: 4Y1A0719 (33072044026).jpg by Ninara, CC BY 2.0 (2017), a teak house and courtyard at M.R. Kukrit’s house.