About an hour by car or bus from the central districts of Bangkok, along The Old Sukhumvit Road near km. 33, there is a remarkable place called Muan Borang (Muan meaning "city" and Boran meaning "ancient" in Thai).

The site was built by Mr. Lek Viriyaphant, with the aim of preserving a way of life and a set of Thai traditions that modernity has largely swept away. It also exists to promote the arts and traditional crafts. To that end, a whole city was constructed, one that some call a miniature, though once you actually arrive and take in the sheer scale of it, the word hardly seems to fit.

Everything is built to natural size, which makes the place feel like a genuine city within Bangkok.

Once you arrive, if you haven't come by car, it's wise to rent bicycles or a golf cart, because the grounds are vast. It's also worth setting aside an entire day to take it all in properly.

The buildings are typically wooden, the way people lived in the past and the way you can still occasionally see in Thailand today, though less and less so. Wandering through these structures, stepping inside, and examining the original furniture, with its antique pieces and intriguing details, is well worth the time. Everything on display is remarkably accessible, because in Thailand, even in Bangkok, people don't seem to have picked up the habit, now so widespread elsewhere in the world, of taking what isn't theirs. We were genuinely struck by how little anything was protected, and by the steady stream of people coming and going.

It is particularly fascinating to visit places like a teahouse (of the kind that existed in earlier times) and an opium den, complete with all the implements and pipes that were once used.

One of the buildings is a brothel. It is also interesting to watch how certain crafts and foods are made using the most rudimentary methods.

A great many antiques are on display, and there is one space in particular devoted to traditional Thai puppets, which are genuine works of art.

There are also several vessels, replicas of ancient boats, floating on lakes flanked by sculptural constructions that are thoroughly, unmistakably Thai.

As you wander through the grounds, you'll come across replicas of temples and buildings from the great periods of the Siamese kingdom's glory, especially from the Sukhothai era.

You can eat on the premises and sample rich, handmade sweets.

If after all that walking you'd rather sit down to dinner facing the ocean, I recommend heading to Bang Pu, just a few kilometers from the ancient city. It's a military area, technically, though open to the public, and it doesn't feel like one at all, since we didn't spot a single soldier the entire time we were there.

The spectacle that greeted us as we arrived at dusk was extraordinary. Thousands of seagulls wheeled through the air all at once, and people standing on a long pier were tossing food up to them, which the birds caught mid-flight, drawing us all into the pleasure of this improbable scene.

The seafood and fish here are excellent, and at prices that border on the absurd, beer included.

Thai people's good habits never cease to surprise me. At certain points along the pier, where everyone was crowding together to watch the gulls and feed them, there were small stations fitted out with clean water and soap so you could wash your hands afterward. A small thing, but the kind of small thing you notice.

The sunset was another remarkable spectacle over that calm sea, which in January looked almost like a half-dried lake, so gentle and so far out was the tide. Long stretches of sand showed only the faint dampening left behind by the slow, retreating water.

Sanuk