The man who built the Mon their very own museum
Two decades ago, the Mon community of Bang Kradi was not on the tourist map of Bangkok. It was just a toilet stop for visitors taking a boat ride along the Sanam Chai canal to Phanthai Norasing shrine in Samut Sakhon.
Thanks to the determination of Sgt Tawatpong Monda, 43, to have a repository of Mon heritage, he founded the Mon Art and Cultural Centre when he was 20 years old. The centre was the beginning of the community’s move forward to tourism. Today, Bang Kradi is known as a living heritage museum of Mon culture.
“When I founded the Mon Art and Cultural Centre, I didn’t want to do it for tourism. I only wanted it to be a learning centre for younger generations. My wish was to let kids in our community know their roots,” he said.
He got interested in museums when he visited some of the local ones during school trips as a boy. Tawatpong finished a vocational certificate and became a monk when he turned 20, at his grandmother’s request. While in the monkhood, he saw pickup trucks stopped at the temple parking lots and villagers selling stuff such as khanchong (vintage-style mirrors), brass bowls and other old items.
“I felt regret. I asked the former abbot if I could set up a museum at the temple. I also volunteered to take care of it. The abbot liked my idea, but the temple did not have a budget or a space. So I decided to leave the monkhood after eight months to open my own museum,” he said.
It didn’t take him that long to collect old items. He started his project by displaying old things belonging to his family like pottery, jars, clothes and costumes. He displayed them on a terrace of his raised-floor house. He turned on Mon music and prepared a traditional lacquer receptacle for a set of betel nuts and invited the elders in the community to meet each other at his house.
He wanted them to complete his idea of an art-and-cultural centre. “The old people give me wisdom. I also wanted them to see what I did,” he said.
Those who supported his idea donated objects of their family’s heritage to his museum. As the number of collections increased, he moved the exhibition to the ground floor of his house and added picture boards and items used for Mon ceremonies and festivals.
“The abbot also gave me some old objects for display. I was glad to receive his support,” he said. But it did not please all the locals. Some thought the museum should be housed at the temple, while others believed that those who take anything from temples as his or her own possession would be cursed and become insane.
His parents were also afraid of him being jinxed. Tawatpong had to beg and console them that he ran the museum for public benefit, not his own.
“I used my own savings to buy old items that our locals would sell to me, or even travelled to places like Kanchanaburi when I knew that someone would sell khong wong [a gong circle] from Mon state,” he said, adding that at that time he had to borrow about 40,000 baht from an elder in the community to buy the gong circle.
His effort was bearing fruit when some visitors who stopped at Wat Bang Kradi to answer nature’s call learned from the elders in the community that Bang Kradi had the art-andcultural centre. They walked along a narrow concrete alley from the temple to Soi 14 to see the Mon collections.
Later, Tawatpong’s museum was mentioned in the newsletter of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA). The Culture Sport and Tourism Department of BMA organised a community tour to Bang Kradi. Media started pouring in.
In 2003, he received an honoured guest, Thanphuying Putrie Viravaidya. She hired Tawatpong to be part of a museum team of Princess Mother Memorial Park in Klong San district. The staff of the museum were sent to help rearrange the collections and improve presentations in the Mon Art and Cultural Centre.
Tawatpong spent most of his salary on purchasing more Mon artefacts for his project.
In 2006, BMA launched a programme to preserve local wisdom in seven old communities in Bangkok. Bang Kradi was selected as part of the programme. BMA worked with the Thai Kradi Research Institute of Thammasat University to find strengths and weakness of the community to outline a master plan.
The research team found that Bang Kradi has a strong Mon culture. Locals joined together to introduce walking routes in the community, and some families opened their houses to show how they make embroidered sabai. One house’s living room is decorated as a Mon photo gallery. And activities such as Mon cooking and playing traditional Mon games are organised at the Mon Art and Cultural Centre.
Later, the Culture Sport and Tourism Department of the BMA organised tours regularly to bring visitors to Bang Kradi. The community also received a group of students and academics who wanted to study Mon culture.
BMA listed the Mon Art and Cultural Centre as one of the outstanding tourist attractions and promoted the Bang Kradi community as one of the hidden gems of its 50 districts.
“I am glad that our community is known as a living museum. I think what I’ve done has paid off much more than I had expected. Today our people are proud of being Mon and want to preserve our culture and identity,” he said.