Bangkok Journal: Wat Pho
I decided the night before that this was going to be my day to see glittering Siam, so I took the sky train down to the river to catch a boat. There are zillions of boats in Bangkok and the big connection port is at Saphan Taksin. I got a day pass, because I figured since I was planning to make a night of it that would be a good idea. However, the day pass ended at 3:00 p.m. Damn. That wasn't going to throw too much of a knot in my day, but it meant that I would have to at least figure out how to kill a few hours. The Chao Phraya tourist boat set me back 150 baht, but that's not that bad for a day pass in the scheme of things. The cruise up the river was actually really nice. You got to see a ton of the city, most all of the major temple complexes and some of the amazing skyscrapers. It's clearly a very old and very modern city bumped up right against each other.
We got out at the Tha Tien pier which puts you just outside of the temple. Though first you have to walk through a dried fish market, which absolutely reeks. Then again, it's a pier. That should be expected. When you enter the gate for Wat Pho there are some jaunty guardian statues there right at the front. I thought they were kind of cool so there's a picture of them on my Facebook photos. I checked out the map of the 9 splendors of Wat Pho and decided to just wander around.
The first thing I ran smack into was the hall of the Reclining Buddha. What a masterpiece! It has to be 30-40 meters long and two stories high. It was absolutely incredible. The pictures can never do it justice. The statue itself is incredibly elaborately detailed. From the design that went into the towering pillows to the exquisitely detailed mother of pearl inlay in both of the feet and toes, to the rippling folds of fabric from the garment he's wearing. It's most amazing statue I have ever seen in my life. But the statue was only part of it. The walls and ceilings are also finely detailed as well and show thousands of individual scenes of enlightened ones meditating, demons coming around and messing things up and random people doing little work scenes. From floor to ceiling you'll find these paintings. It was awe inspiring. The one thing that kind of threw me out of my revery though were the installation of the massive modern spotlights. So there are huge lamps, much like you use in the theater to shine the light onto the gold leaf covering the Buddha. Other than that, this was a definite life moment.
There were thousands of other statues and things to see so I walked out around the corner and found a little open air festival market. It was early in the day yet, but people were gearing up for afternoon Songkran festival crowds. It was too early to eat anything yet so I kept going. One of the next halls I found was an outdoor pavilion filled with standing Buddhas. All of the standing Buddhas had their hands raised in different positions, some of them in mudras I recognized, but mostly in a kind of "stop" position. So as I was walking down through the hall I was singing to myself "Stop! In the name of love." There were seriously like a hundred of them.
All of the standing Buddhas were facing inward to a courtyard full of Stupas. A stupa is a Buddhist funerary monument. The word translates from the Sanskrit to literally mean "heap." So the first ones were all very plain and just a kind of mound over the remains of a priest. This particular style of stupa is a traditional architectural feature found pretty much only in Thai temples and classical buildings. It has this kind of narrowing peak creating a point straight up to the sky. They're built in successive rings of mosaic tile, and they absolutely just glitter in the sunlight. The only problem I had was that they are practically impossible to photograph. They're so tall and so elaborate that either you get the height or you get a detail. I couldn't figure out a good method to really capture the depth of the whole thing. And besides that Wat Pho is just completely filled with them. There are dozens of stupas all over the place. After a while they all began to blend together. One of the activities that you could do is buy a bucket of sand and a rose and you could build little stupas near the large ones in honor of someone you loved.
So I wandered back around and came across a little veneration station. There were eight statues and little pools of water and flowers around them. They were labeled each with a day of the week and one for "every day of the week" and it was kind of a wash this Buddha for luck. So I got a bowl of flower water and went through the Buddha car wash. And I say that irreverently, but I was respectful and sincere when I did it. I even donated 20 baht for the floral water.
By this point in the day I was getting a little peckish and figured it was time to buy a few things. So I wandered through the market to find out which thing I would like to get. I settled on this kind of fried chive jelly covered in a soy sauce or oyster sauce. It was pretty good, if a little strange. After that I got a Thai iced tea, which by the way is also made with condensed milk, so no sweetener required.
So of the 9 splendors of Wat Pho I had seen probably 3 of them. So I kept wandering around trying to find more of them. I walked into a random temple and it seemed to be dedicated to some kind of naval hero. But it also had a fortune paper thing. So I put a coin in and drew out a paper. This is where I confess that all through the morning I was having the "I'm sick to death of America" conversation with myself. It was bound to happen. Having been out of the states for this long, hearing second hand about the ridiculous bullshit that the president caved on in order to prevent a government shutdown and feeling like my country is being hijacked by a handful of religious zealots and corporate pigs, why wouldn't I begin thinking about just getting the hell out of dodge? I have met up with three different expats and had three vastly different experiences of what it's like to be doing this kind of work in another country. Sure it sounds like a great idea. And then I pulled my paper from the fortune box. "Now is not the time to move." It's like it read my mind. I did a little thank you prayer and popped that fortune onto a stake. I wasn't about to keep that as a souvenir. Instead I went to the little market stand and bought a little reclining Buddha statue. Not the littlest one, but a small one nevertheless.
It was at that moment, after getting that fortune that I decided that I probably ought to do a little prayer/meditation and chill the hell out. Especially since I fly back to the US in only a matter of days. So I ran into a guy who told me where to find the glorious seated Buddha. And wow, yes, it was glorious. This one was an extra special temple, because no one was allowed to stand in this hall. You had to be seated. You were also encouraged to walk on your knees if you needed to get around the room or to the back of the hall to stand up and exit the room. I stayed in this hall for probably a good half of an hour. I think I needed it. Like really needed it. This was literally the best photograph I could take of the hall, because the light shining off of the Buddha is just really intense.
There were still a few other places to see in Wat Pho so I left the hall of the seated Buddha and found the large standing Buddha. While not as epic as the statue of Guanyin in Wuhan, it was pretty impressive nonetheless. The lighting was kind of weird in this hall so the face was dark but the hips were alight. Go figure. On the back side of this same temple is another seated Buddha, not as glorious as the fancy one I spent some quality time with, but he did have his own bodhi tree. I thought that was kind of a nice touch.
One of the things that I was not exactly expecting to see in the Buddhist temple of Wat Pho was a Shiva Linga. But there it was covered in yogurt and flowers. I almost wouldn't have noticed it, if I hadn't seen a woman climbing up to get a photo of her touching it. She was so enthused! So of course I had to touch it as well. I didn't climb all the way up to go touch the ooze on top, but I took a half step up and touched the base. :D
The only thing left that was on the list of the 9 splendors of Wat Pho was the story of Songkran. Given that Songkran would begin at midnight I figured it would be a good thing to find it. But for the life of me I couldn't figure out where it was. The map was terribly confusing, not to mention that the temple layout as a whole is kind of a maze. I think I found it, but I still couldn't really tell, because everything was in Thai. There were no English language signs that said "Story of Songkran." Or if there were I didn't see them.
But the day was waning and I was debating on going to the grand palace or Wat Arun as well. I even brought a change of pants and a long sleeved shirt just in case because of the dress code. But my brain was kind of boggling from all the stuff I had seen so far I didn't know how much more gold and mosaic tile I could take in. So I wound up walking the street along the river and discovered the amulet market. And this is where I have to ask the same question I asked in China. How do these people make any money? All the amulets look the same. Some of them are of a slightly nicer quality, and some are fairly rough hewn, but you could basically get the same rough hewn Buddha amulet from like 20 different people in the same 50 different kinds of stone. I couldn't figure it out. So I wound up not buying anything from them. Though I discovered that the prices on the street for the same kinds of merchandise inside the temple is like 1/3 of the cost. The reclining Buddha statue that I bought and paid 250 for, I could have got for 100 on the street. Live and learn right?
I walked up the street until I came to the Maharaj pier. And there was a little shopping market around there so I popped in to see if there was anything I was interested in eating. I tried to take a photo of a pile of Lychee nuts and the lady insisted that I buy them. The price advertised was 200 baht a bag, and I said "no no", and she said "100 baht!" "Sure." So I bought a bag of Lychee nuts. I also needed a water, because I was dying of thirst. I saw a lady around the corner had bottled water for 5 baht. But I pulled up at the lady next to the lychee nut woman and she sold me the same damn water for 15 baht. I was pissed, but didn't make a fuss about it. I should have, but I already got a 50% discount on the lychee nuts. So whatever. I still felt ripped off. That's what I get for not speaking Thai.
So I ate my lychee nuts in piece and waited for the boat. I couldn't decide if I really wanted to go see Wat Arun or not and figured I would make up my mind on the boat ride. Turns out the express boat you have to get up and hail the captain to let you out at a specific pier. So I had no idea when to ask him to get off the boat. Besides that, the boat stopped on the East bank of the river, and you had to get a secondary boat taxi to take you to the west bank of the river to Wat Arun. So I just took this picture of Wat Arun as we were sailing along and rode the tourist boat to the end of the line back at Saphan Taksin.
I think I'm going to put Sala Daeng into a separate entry. I've really filled this one out a lot, and don't want LJ to cut me off.