Buddha’d Out in Bangkok

I’m on sensory overload from all the unbelievable temples, palaces, pagodas and buddhas we saw today.  We started the morning by heading to the Royal Palace which also contains the grounds of a number of temples including one that houses the Emerald Buddha.  When we arrived we learned that the grounds were closed until later that afternoon.   On of the guards there however was very helpful.  He pointed out on our map some other sites that were fairly close by and helped us negotiate a good price for a tuk-tuk driver to take us around, about twenty five cents for several hours of driving us around.  That only included a couple of stops at rip off jewelry and clothing stores but it was sort of fun and he was a nice guy.

First he took us to the Golden Buddha and the Golden Mount pagoda next door.  The Golden Buddha is huge, maybe ten meters tall.  There are also a number of smaller golden buddhas that are in the temple.  The pagoda had a lot of steps and climbed up many of them and rang some of the many gongs.  While waiting in the parking lot for our driver a man from Chieng Mai started to talk to us.  He said he owned a restaurant in Chieng Mai but was in Bangkok to see his son who was a monk at the temple.  It turned out that he had lived in Reno, Nevada, for a while.  (His English was pretty good.)  He told us his wife liked to go skiing around Lake Tahoe.

After a few brief shopping stops we arrived back at the Royal Palace grounds.  It is an amazing wonderland of multicolored mosaics, larger than life size statues most inlaid with colored stones and gilded.  The temples are painted in brilliant colors with red or blue tile roofs, inlaid marble steps and floors and painted murals of scenes from Buddha’s life.  The Emerald Buddha is housed in one of the temples.   It’s actually quite small and made of jade, not emerald, but it is exquisite.  It sits on an altar that is about ten meters high and is surrounded by other beautiful carvings, all in gold.   The grounds of the Royal Palace cover and area of 218,000 meters, all surrounded by high walls and gates.

We saw the royal throne room and it reminded me of scenes form “The King and I.”
We bought some street food on the way back to the hotel, grilled squid and some grilled meat balls.  Yummy!