The Heaven Dragon Park and the Museum of Dragon's Descendants

While every town in Thailand (and Laos) has a city pillar shrine, the one in Suphanburi is... a little different than most.

Instead of just a city pillar, this small town in central Thailand has an entire Chinese village, ornate temple, and massive museum of Chinese culture. As you walk through a red Chinese-style gate and cross a curved bridge over a small pond, it really does feel like being transported to a small village in rural China! The plaza is lined with shops and restaurants selling souvenirs and noodles.

There's even a convenience store, which is also built according to the Chinese theme of the little cultural village.

The Heaven Dragon Park (sometimes translated as "Celestial Dragon Village") was built in 1996 to celebrate 20 years of diplomatic relations between Thailand and China.

Standing just beyond the village is a large building designed to look like a ferocious Chinese dragon. It towers over the relatively flat surroundings looking like something out of a bizarre theme park.

The dragon is actually a museum! Officially, it's the Museum of Dragon's Descendants, a rather strange but impressive project built as a gift by the Chinese government to tell the history of China.

When you visit the museum, you have to go on a tour with a museum guide. Each room is a fantastically creative multimedia display. The story of China's history starts at the very beginning, and I do mean the VERY beginning, with the legend of Pangu and the Chinese creation myth.

The tour then progresses through various rooms, each one dedicated to telling of a particular dynasty from China's history, as well as teaching about China's developments such as tea, gunpowder, rocketry, navigation, and various philosophical traditions.

The museum is incredibly creative, a real modern take on a history museum, with exhibits that move, light up, and utilize smoke, sound, and storytelling to share the information from the exhibits.

Super cool! The only problem? The entire tour was in Thai, but I was still able to get the main idea of the exhibits just through context.

Outside of the dragon there is a colorful Chinese temple, the Chao Por Lak Muang Suphan Shrine. It's richly colorful, and a real cacophony of sense, with lots of clanging bells, incense smoke, and people praying and chanting.

I'm still not completely sure why Suphanburi was selected as the site of this Chinese-Thai cultural village. The rural province in central Thailand may have some significance, but I'm not aware of it. Maybe it was just a convenient place to build such a large and impressive monument to Chinese-Thai friendship.