District museum brochures - mission impossible

When I found out last year that the BMA local museums offer their visitors a nice Thai language brochure about their district, I have tried to collect as many of these brochures as possible. So in my vacation last year I visited as many of these museums as possible, and could get seven of them. Though I had no hopes to visit all of the remaining museums this year, I could do another five - I will post reports on the visits in my travel blog within the next months - now after this visit my hopes to get the whole set of the brochures are now shattered. In two of the museums I had to ask for the brochure, and the clerk found one in the depth of the desk, only in Bang Sue there was still a pile right at the counter, but in two museums this brochure was no longer available. Especially for Bang Rak this is easy to understand, as the district museum is within the Bangkok Folk museum, a very recommendable museum and thus much more often visited than the other district museums located in schools or temples. For Dusit district it may be similar, as the district museum is right next to the Kiak Kai children museum, so maybe also has relatively many visitors.

Already before I posted about the brochures last year I tried to contact the Bangkok tourist office without any reaction, and earlier this year I tried again all the tourist offices available. The main TAT office replied that they don't have them and offered an alternative brochure on museums; the German branch office send me a general museum brochure - nice and interesting, but not the one I was asking for. And the Bangkok tourist office - again no reaction at all. My final hope was to visit the Bangkok tourist office in person, but either the clerk did not get which brochures I was asking for, or they really had none of them on stock and sent them all to the museums. I only got a small book on the various museums around Bangkok - lots of ideas for future trips, but again not what I wanted.

So unless there will be a second edition of the brochures, thanks to the ignorance of the Bangkok tourist office I will only have an incomplete selection of them. I still cannot understand why they did not at least took the time to answer that they don't have it. Actually, they should have tried hard to get them, since I made clear mention of my blogging activities. By writing my reports I am in fact doing work for them for free, more and more travelers use the internet and blogs when planning a trip. I am quite disappointed by their job attitude, though it won't stop me from writing more articles and doing the promotion they should do themselves.

Enough ranting. Though I now won't be able to collect the whole set, I still want to have as many of the brochures as possible. Now owning nine of 27, there are still 16 which may still be available. However when I can come to Bangkok again someday next year, the chances of still getting any will be even lower than now. And to make it worse, I already visited all the museums which are relatively easy to reach with walking and public transport, the remaining are more remote. But if any of the Bangkok residents reading my blog wants to help me, I clearly would appreciate it - though modest these museums are worth visiting to learn a bit about the respective district. The locations of these museums can be easily seen in my Google map.