Published on October 20, 2005

Written from a daughter’s point of view, in the form of personal correspondence, “Luk Sao Pipitaphan” reveals a family’s heartbreaking struggle against the odds to create the now-celebrated Ja Tawee folk museum in Phitsanulok.

The effort almost destroyed the author’s parents’ marriage 30 years ago.

Pornsiri Booranaket sheds light on why her father, an amateur at museum work, decided to take a precocious interest in utterly banal objects – rat traps, coconut graters, serving sets for betel nuts that weren’t even made of silver but cheap wood.

But at the same time she places his labour of love in the context of how meagrely financed museums like this one have increasingly become crucial bases of learning, where experience is shared first-hand.

The family has endured constant financial stress and emotional strain to open and maintain their private museum, which now has more than 10,000 items on display.

Pornsiri’s 37 letters are addressed to her mum, dad and twin sibling, her high-school French teacher and close friends, all of whom she can pour out her heart in moments of both desperation and joy.

None, apart from her father, of course, could change the course of events, but the passion and cynical humour she brings to her letters make the book fascinating, for Pornsiri is no passive museum guide, and certainly not a passive narrator.

She recounts with great wit a flood of remembered episodes and personalities. Toward her parents she is respectful but unflattering, toward museum visitors candid and insightful.

These visitors always seemed to demand free admission, a free guide, free refreshments and free gifts, even as mum and dad were crippled by their investment of time and money and drifting apart.

The museum was free to visit for 18 years, but when it began charging a minimal fee, many who dropped by squawked at the cost and, finding that Pornsiri couldn’t be persuaded to waive the fee one last time, refused to enter.

Then there were the requests from the museum’s donors to get their money back! Donation envelopes that were handed over by famous people, amid great fanfare and grand speeches to the assembled cameras, were often requested returned.

Equally annoying was the common assumption that, since the museum was privately run, its hours were flexible enough that appointments to visit could be made – and then carelessly missed by three or four hours, even on days it was normally closed. Like many open-shelf facilities, Pornsiri’s museum has seen its share of thievery. The family reluctantly began keeping certain items in locked display cases.

But even robbery wasn’t as bad as the sadism that occasionally cropped up. Guests would sometimes ask Pornsiri to place her own hand inside a wooden box used to trap and kill bamboo rats. They wanted to see a “live” demonstration.

And there was verbal sexual abuse when Pornsiri or other female staff members showed a breast-shaped wooden device traditionally used for self-massage.

Fortunately, there is much more to the book than uncivilised behaviour. As it traces the three decades in the museum’s life, “Luk Sao Pipitaphan” also serves as a pocket history of the author’s childhood.

She grew up with the collection, and suffered emotionally as a result. Constantly torn between “dad’s dream and mum’s nightmare”, she had a love-and-hate relationship with the museum, yet ultimately decided to follow her little-educated father’s wish and study archaeology.

In the end, she is not only reconciled with her destiny, but in love with the museum. The minimal entrance fee, it turns out, helps weed out disinterested guests, and anyway, there’s still a one-baht flat rate when teachers bring in poor children from remote schools.

There is a lot going on in the book, some of which could have been developed further, such as the story of her father, Tawee Booranaket, who’s now in his 70s.

His daughter’s portrait of him, as a “mad” collector of “junk” that would become museum pieces, remains sketchy. Readers learn little about him as a person, and nothing at all about how this former low-ranking army map-maker evolved into a museum curator.

Pornsiri mentions only in passing that the money for the museum derived mainly from the family’s foundry, which cast Buddha images. Her father had established the foundry after leaving the army at 46, realising he had a dream to pursue.

And a story that made headlines for weeks – the local government’s imposition this year of a retroactive tax on the museum – is touched upon only briefly. It’s too important a detail to skim past: Private museums’ lack of legal status in a country where most such facilities are run by monks is a national issue.

There seems to be more to Pornsiri herself as well. It’s interesting that she wrote the book in longhand using her left hand, though she’s right-handed and inscribes the family’s brass Buddha images with her right hand. Her left hand she saves for important writings – such as this book.

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