Silom Road Video and Chiang Khan Movie Theater

The highly inventive SE Asia Movie Theater project has just come up with a real winner, the old movie theater in Chiang Khan on the banks of the Mekong which has gone out of business (1970-1990) but had the sense to remember the past with a small museum.

I've been to this town which is in find preservation condition, and home to a few crazy expats married to local Thai girls; their offsprings hell on wires, more like Western brats than well mannered Thai kids. I rented a motorcycle in Nong Khai then went west along the Mekong to Chiang Khan, then south to Loei where I spent the night. Nice ride and no tourists.

Thanks to the preservationist resolve of the Chiang Khan community (or maybe the long-stagnant economy), the town looks much as it did one hundred years ago, with about 80 percent of the houses and commercial buildings made of old teak wood. Its antique flavor has turned Chiang Khan into a hip tourist destination. Following suit, the Suwan Rama Theater has been converted into a mini-museum of itself.

For many years, Chiang Khan's position on the Mekong River gave it an advantage in the river trade. It is the first Thai town with a port on the Mekong after the river reconnects with Thailand to form the border with Laos. That means that any product that was shipped down the Mekong from northwestern Laos would reach the Chiang Khan port before any other point on the river. Hence the growth of the town a hundred years ago. That's my own speculation, but it seems right, right?

All in all it was pretty cool to see an old theater in Thailand that's still keeping its memory alive. When it's possible and practical, I think it's important to put some resources into preserving old structures like this. In Thailand, as in the rest of Southeast Asia and most parts of the world, these old movie theaters were often the the most socially central places around. Communities convened around them, businesses sprang up around them and their influence ran deep. I hope that theaters like this increasingly get put on the list of cultural heritage sites in Thailand, so they will be preserved and future generations will be able to learn from them.

The Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project