The Curious Erawan Museum In Thailand

Hmm. A giant three-headed elephant sculpture atop a cupcake of a museum, becoming a landmark from the highways in Bangkok. Fantastic!

The big boys. Most people don't realize the site is more than a sculpture.

Around the base of the Erawan Museum, plenty more elephants, brightly painted and all lined up.

The museum is another extravaganza from businessman Lek Viriyaphant. He needed a storage space for his artifact collection. Naturally, something with a three-headed elephant sculpture made of bronze and 29 meters tall.

Inside the pedestal, a re-creation of the Hindu universe. Complicated.

Curvy. Upstairs, an interpretation of Hindu heaven.

Another angle of the bronze beast.

Ancient City

There's no limit to the imagination when it comes to a theme for an amusement park. Super-rich Thai industrialist businessman Lek Viriyaphan has produced a few whoppers, from a giant wood temple to a three-headed elephant extravaganza. Perhaps his greatest creation is his biggest one, a giant park devoted to many structures from ancient Thailand - Siam.

The park is a curious combination of replicated structures, a handful of relocated authentic sites and brand new imagined buildings. Anything goes.

The Pavilion of the Enlightened, perhaps the most beautiful structure in the park. It's part of Suvarnabhumi in Thai literary sources, meaning "Golden Land."

An example of ancient architecture, the Fruit-Shape Tower (Prang Mafuang). A slice of water-based rural life, a floating village.

The Great Vajiradhama Temple or Temple of Heavens.

Inside the temple complex, a reclining Buddha with bling, from head to toe.

Not a mirror trick, there are 28 large, gold Buddhas lined up inside the temple.

Fun with scale. A few of the re-created sites have been done in a miniaturized scale. The flora size gives it away. Back at the Enlightened Pavilion, wooden Buddhas gathering for a morning chat.

The park boasts about being the largest outdoor museum in the world. Not in doubt - exhausting.