TMBThanachart offers anyone an opportunity to visit the Garuda Museum, in Samut Prakan’s Bang Pu Industrial Estate free of charge.
The museum is the one and only museum in Southeast Asia to gather garuda exhibits from all regions across Thailand with the highlights being garuda emblems from 150 branches of TMBThanachart banks. These wood-carved garuda emblems, which you can often see at banks, are royally granted to businesses that are deemed honest and honourable.
The museum explores the legend or origin of the Great Garuda through six exhibit zones in a dazzling way through lights, colours and sounds of animations and multimedia. "Zone 1: Reception Hall" is where the adventure of the Great Garuda legend begins. Explore its origin through augmented reality technology.
"Zone 2: Garuda Piman (Paradise)" is where visitors explore Buddhist cosmology and ponder how the Earth and the universe come to be. Step into a recreation of Himmapan Forest, which is said to be the birthplace of garudas. Located in the centre of the room is the Anodad Pond, which is surrounded by auspicious sculptures of lions, elephants, horses and bovines. Amid lush greenery, meet mythical creatures such as hermits, Gandharvas (celestial beings who perform music), Vijjadharas (semi-divine bearers of wisdom) and Nariphon trees, which bear fruit in the shape of young beautiful women. The piece de resistance of this zone is an impressive replica of the garuda egg which, according to the legend, is laid by Vinata, Great Garuda’s mother. Visitors are welcome to take photos with the egg.
"Zone 3: Naga Metropolis" is a 10m tunnel imaginatively transformed into a mythical underwater world where the nagas, Garuda’s sworn enemies, reside. Witness the half-sibling rivalry between Garuda and the Nagas who are born from different mothers but share the same father. Family drama alert. You see, Vinata, Garuda’s mother, is tricked into becoming a slave to her sister Kadru, the Nagas’ mother, for five centuries. Garuda has to steal an elixir of life from Phra Narai in order to free his mother from servitude.
"Zone 4: Immortal God of Sky" depicts Garuda’s perseverance, gratitude and selflessness through a multimedia animation, which is projected onto a semi-circular wall. His quest to seize the elixir led to his eventual defeat and death. In spite of that, Phra Narai praises Garuda for his unwavering gratitude for his mother, asks him to be his mount, and grants him immortality.
"Zone 5: Vehicle for Kings" explore the Tra Krut Pah (Emblem of Thailand), which represents Thai monarchs and its origins and how it comes to be associated with Thai kings since the Ayutthaya era. It stems from a Khmer belief that kings are avatars of Narai (Vishnu) who descend from heaven to rule the kingdom with Garuda as his vehicle on Earth.
"Zone 6: Garuda Exhibits Room" houses 150 garuda sculptures from across the country, including the first emblem royally bestowed to Siam City Bank’s Ratchadamnoen branch. Most of them are carved from wood and, if you look closer, you may notice that no two garuda sculptures look the same as they differ in facial expression or the colour of their attires.
Besides the aforementioned exhibits, the four-metre garuda sculpture stands in front of the museum and visitors can pay respect to it to attract auspiciousness to their lives. You can visit the museum for free but the catch is that you'll have to register in advance at ttbfoundation.org/th/garudamuseum. It opens from Fridays to Saturdays only for three rounds each day at 10am, 1pm and 3pm. Guided tours are provided free of charge and a bus shuttle service between the museum and BTS Kheha can be arranged in advance.
