Which wat is what?

Today was a day full of wats...or Thai temples. After our relaxing day and social night the day before, we woke up early and were determined to spend the day seeing all the sights of the city.  I feel pretty satisfied that we did a great job! Katy has been to Bangkok before (on a cruise, for about half a day), so she had some ideas about what we should see....and we figured out the rest along the way. 

We started off with a delicious breakfast in our hostel.  An omelette, toast, and the best iced coffee I've ever had, all enjoyed in the outside lounge area for 80 baht...that is less than 3 dollars (and let's remember that since we were at the hostel, of course the prices were jacked up). Can't beat that Thai pricing :)  Then we headed out toward the Grand Palace, which houses Wat Phra Kaew (the Temple of the Emerald Buddha). This palace is the former royal residence and is still used by the King for some things (for example, one of the building was closed off as his cousin has recently died and her body is being held there until the creamation services commence).  We found some Canadians (of course, that seems to be the trend here) who were headed in the same direction as us and all found the entrance together. We rented clothes so that we were properly dressed for the Palace (despite the stifling 90 degrees) and ventured in.  The palace is beautiful, with colorful tiles and marble everywhere. The Emerald Buddha is a sight to see. It's a rather small buddha but perched high up in the temple. He is made of Jasper and the King changes his garb three times a year, depending on season. You are allowed to enter the Wat as long as you stay respectful, obviously with shoes off, stay quiet, no pictures. You cannot at any time point your feet towards the Buddha, in Thailand, feet are seen as the lowest and dirtiest part of the body and it is extremely disrespectful to have them raised on furniture or pointing at anyone.

Katy renting a skirt....outside of ABP (ha that's for all you work people)

 

 

 

After our time at the Grand Palace, we headed towards Wat Pho, which houses the reclining Buddha, 46m long and 15m high. The reclining position signifies the exact moment of the Buddha's englightenmnet and death. The Buddha is finished in gold leaf and is pretty magnificent. The eyes and the feet have mother of pearl inlays. We pretty much just walked in and marveled at this huge image and then headed out again.



After the reclining Buddha, Katy was pretty set on seeing the Golden Budda, or Wat Traimit. She had seen it when she was in Bangkok before. However, this Wat isn't nearly as famous as the others (although, after seeing it, I am unsure why) so it was an experience to get there.  Times like the one I am about to describe is why I love traveling so much. 
So we grabbed our trusty map and tried to figure out what the heck the Golden Buddha was labeled as on it (at this point we didn't know the Thai name). The great (sarcasm) thing about Thailand is things are spelled differently every place you look, so Wat Traimit was Trai Mit some places, Trimit some others, and Traimit some others.  We finally found a guard on our way out of the Reclining Buddha who very confidently pointed us in the direction of the Golden Buddha and we understood that he said "boat."  So we walked toward the water, found a ferry that looked promising (and that was only 3 baht, about 10 cents), and hopped on.  Ha. We got all excited as this thing started up and we were on the Chao Phraya river. We also thought we scored a fantastic deal.  We quickly realized we weren't headed up or down the river, but across it. And that was it.  We had paid to cross the river.  No wonder it was 3 baht.  But it looked cool on the other side, so we decided to get off and wander around. It was SO COOL over there! I felt like we had wandered into Oz or something because I had no idea there was something to see on the other side. Perhaps I should have read my guidebook more carefully, because we realized what it was after a few minutes of wandering....Wat Arun! Another temple, and a beautiful one at that....one that we would have never gotten to if we didn't grab the wrong ferry. So we explored here for a bit, and then continued on our quest for the Golden Buddha. 

View of Chao Phraya

Wat Arun

On our way up Wat Arun

Area outside of the ferry station near the Golden Buddha

We crossed back over the river and decided to spend more than 10 seconds reading the ferry schedule. It was pretty simple to figure out, actually- so we waited for the proper ferry to come by, hopped on, and got off at the closest stop to Wat Traimit, which ended up being a mile or a mile and a half away. We trusted our map skills and took a pretty cool walk through some Thai neighborhoods (we were definitely the only tourists around at all, which is so much better than being one of a million white people as you are trying to explore other cultures) before we FINALLY found the Golden Buddha.....aaaah. This thing should have been illuminated by some crazy lights or something after the journey we took to get there.  You can't take pictures, but I'm sure if you google Wat Traimit you can see what it looks like.  This Buddha had actually been hidden in stucco a long time ago for safekeeping and was rediscovered during temple construction quite recently....from the info we were able to find they dropped this giant piece of stone and it cracked and inside was this beautiful Buddha.

Woman outside of ferry station

So now you know which wat is what :)  As I write, we are on a bus headed toward Pak Chong, which is the closest town to Khao Yai National Park. Supposedly, there are some people from the guesthouse we contacted who will be waiting to pick us up and get us into the park...let's hope so :)