During the early Cold War the Soviet Union built around 200 whiskey-class patrol submarines meant to launch guided missiles. On February 6th 2007 a decommissioned Soviet whiskey-class submarine was being towed by a Swedish vessel and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic somewhere off the coast of Denmark. The sub was en route to Jesada Technik Museum in Nakon Pathom, about an hour away from Bangkok.
If the sub had reached it’s final destination it would have been right at home with the assortment of odd vehicles, vessels, trains and airplanes on display at the museum. This really is a gearhead’s dream: hovercrafts, ex-military transport planes, motorcycles, amphibious boat-cars, micro cars, muscle cars, helicopters…if it has an engine and wheels or wings, chances are you’ll find it here.
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And that’s what makes this place worth a visit, there are some very unusual specimens located here. The “museum” is a project of Mr. Jesada Deshsakulrith, a bit of a transportation mogul himself, being the owner and managing director of Chase Siam Enterprises, a firm that sells fire trucks and other heavy-industry equipment to Western countries. He was inspired to start this museum after checking out automobile museums during his travels in the West. He hopes that amassing this collection will inspire Thailand’s next generation of transportation enthusiasts and engineers to create something interesting of their own.
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There’s plenty to be inspired by – this is most likely one of the only places on the entire continent that you’ll catch a glimpse of not one, but two amphibicars, a civilian vehicle designed to be driven on the road and then right into the water. Only 4,000 of the German-built automobiles were produced and the majority of remaining examples still reside in America where they were sold during the 1960’s. There’s also a Mercedes 170H, a car that isn’t instantly recognizable as a Mercedes. In fact, it looks more like Volkswagen Beetle. Interestingly enough, the chief engineer for Mercedes at the time, Dr. Porsche, was also the creator of Volkswagen. The London-sourced double decker bus and classic American school bus outside are certainly a comforting sight for visiting farangs.
The cars are the main draw, but there’s a whole hangar full of planes and a courtyard full of trains on the premises as well.
The museum’s upkeep certainly isn’t the strong suite of the operation, but perhaps that only leads to the mystique…
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