By Nong Nooch Village is a man-made wonder which takes us to a world that combines the artistic culture of the beautiful country of Thailand with real life scenes and natural beauty that covers vast acres of land. In the last part, I concluded by describing about the elephant show. After the show, I had food and then decided to have a glance at Nong Nooch Village.
It takes 1-1/2 days to see and enjoy the whole of it. The sights in the Nong Nooch Village are so many that they cannot be described fully. The long list of things to be seen here includes Butterfly Hill, topiary garden, Cactus Garden, Orchid Garden with rare and beautiful species of orchids, orchid nursery, bird sanctuaries, zoo, Dinosaur Valley, Bonsai and Topiary Garden, French Garden, palm garden having more than 1000 palms, etc. I went to the tropical botanical garden through the Butterfly Hill where I saw flowers of different colours. I have time just enough to see everything and take photos.
The path from Butterfly Hill to botanical garden is full of images of different types of ants and beetles stuck to plants and creepers. The artistic perfection of these is such that they look just like the real ones. When I went forward, I saw the magnificent botanical garden the beauty of which is beyond description. The sculptures of animals of the dinosaur age can be seen with their heads raised high, at different places in the botanical garden. The far away hills act as a fort to this heavenly place. The European Garden is something that one would want to see again and again.
From the viewpoint here, we can see the extensive yet lush greenery, the hills that form boundaries to this, the scattered sculptures of dinosaurs raising their heads to the clear sky; all these took me to an imaginary world. I cursed the shortage of time and had a quick look at the dinosaur park and the Mughal Garden and decided to leave the rest of the sights unseen. I stepped out of Nong Nooch Village repeatedly looking back at it.
My next trip is to Bangkok. We had planned to have a dinner cruise. The distance from Nong Nooch Village to the River City of Bangkok is around 150 km. The cruise starts from the River City. The journey through the broad and excellent road system was highly pleasurable. On the way, the vehicle stopped near a handsome building. This is for the travellers to rest and refresh. It is an attractive place with a lovely garden with some chairs for relaxing. It also had a small cafe. We took rest for some time and then continued our journey. At the end of the journey after an hour, we reached Bangkok, the incredibly charming tourist spot.
Bangkok is a city of contradictions where one can see the happy confluence of modernism with traditions and is known as the Venice of the East. It is a metropolis which can be visited even at a low budget. Bangkok is a meeting place of elegant restaurants offering varied taste pleasers, crowds of tourists the sight of which energizes the body and mind, beaches, the amazing Buddha temples and the lively nightlife. The night views appeared as if the stars in the sky have come down into the earth. When I saw the city with cheerful music and colours, I felt like I shouldn’t have come because I realized that I will not be able to enjoy anything fully in the short time that I have.
I have just enough time to run around and see something so that if somebody asks me if I have visited Bangkok, I can just say “yes.” The time fixed for the cruise dinner was 7.30. There was around 2 to 2-1/2 hours left for the cruise. So, we decided to visit the Gems Gallery in the meantime. Entry tickets need to be taken, but we will get that for free when we purchase things from petrol pumps, shopping malls, restaurants, etc. Gems Gallery is actually a business trick. Anyway, we went to the Gallery and took the tickets.
As soon as we entered the Gems Gallery, we got a welcome drink. After that, a mini train arrived. When we got into the train, it started moving towards a cave. Gemstone mining from ancient days to the modern day is beautifully demonstrated with various special effects like animation and lighting. The sight of different types and sizes of jewels shining like stars in the light, on the sides of the cave is something that should not be missed out. In this 5-minute trip, we got a lot of information about the manufacture and mining of stones.
After getting out of the cave, we went ahead to the gem factory. There are hundreds of people working here. I could see the workers fully concentrated in their work, like, rubbing and shaping gemstones, studding stones on ornaments, etc. After the visit to jewellery factory, we went to see the wonderful world of ornaments. It was a marvellous abundance of thousands of varieties of jewelleries that I have never seen before, not even through pictures. There were vessels, cups, etc, bedecked in jewels and anything and everything that we need are there, all of them shining in golden colour.
This is a wholesale as well as retail shop of ornaments ranging from the lowest prices to the most expensive prices which can be in crores. Photography is not permitted here. The jewellery business here is something that we cannot even imagine. The Gems Gallery Company has the largest jewellery and gemstone shops in the world.
We took leave of this luxuriance of glittering gold to visit the River City. The trip to River City will be narrated in the next part.
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