BANGKOK ROYALTY

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February 18th 2007

Published: March 5th 2007

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bec and bren

Royal Palace

Everywhere tourists are know as farang or foriegner,

Well, Today, our first full day in Bangkok, We got up early and enjoyed breakfast on the banks of The Chao Phraya river before heading off on our tour of Wat Phra Kaeo and The Royal Palace (Emerald Buddha). Wat Phra Kaeo is Thailand's most sacred site and was built as the private royal temple in 1785. The Grand Palace is now only used for state functions as The King wanted the site open to the public and now lives Chitrlada Palace in Dusit. The Emerald Buddha is actually a jadeite Buddha and is a hugely sacred figure renowned for it's supposedly miraculous powers although it hasn't cured my slight retardation as of yet. It was great to see how holy Buddhists believe the site is; we made offerings of flower necklaces and little children every chance we got. Seriously though we prayed at every Buddha we went to; the smell of incense in the air as your hot feet touch the cold marble as you pray was really calming. It's such a beautiful peacful religion and to be surrounded by so many Buddhists is beautiful. Now, the reason the buddha isn't

Breakfast Bangkok style

called the Jade Buddha is because they actually didn't bother to find out what exactly the Buddha was made of unilt the 80's. The King changes the costumes worn by The Emerald Buddha according to the seaon and I heard he even gives it a sponge bath and pinches it's nipples but I could have gotten false information. The whole complex is huge, probably taking up 3 square New York City blocks. Every ancient building in the complex holds some specific holy meaning. The huge gold Phra Si Ratana Chedi is this massive gold structure encased in these 1"x1" gold leaf tiles that were laid by hand. 4 tiles is equal to something like 20 US dollars. The Chedi enshrines a piece of the Buddha's breastbone. There are also 178 huge murals of the Ramayana throughout the whole complex that depict every step of the ancient Hindu story of the triumph of good over evil. Most of The Grand Residential complex is closed to the public but you can walk around the structures and head up to the gate and hang out with the Royal Guards, I actually thumbwresteled one of these bastards. Prasat Phra Thep Bidorn contains life size

Some Military Guys

What are you looking at?

bronze and gold statues of all the Bangkok era Kings. Every building in the complex is absolutley amazing. The detail, all done by hand is breathtaking!! After a few hours of enjoying the grandeur of the grounds we walked to Bangkoks oldest temple, Wat Pho. The walk was interesting, traveling through Bangkok traffic and trying not to eat clouds of smog from the many diesel engines and Tuk-Tuks. We had to resort to dressing bandit style with hankerchiefs over our mouths, but hey who doesn't like dressing like a bandit? Built in the 17th century, Wat Pho is most famous for the enormous statue of a gold reclining Buddha. In 1832 King Rama turned the temple into Thailand's first university by decorating the walls with diagrams on subjects such as history, literature and......animal husbandry. Becca was shown first hand the art of animal husbandry and won a goat and 5 pieces of corn!! There is also a center for traditional medicine at Wat Pho, most notably, Thai massage. You can get an ass massage from a monk for about 300 Baht. We wandered around the Wat for a while, met a few homless buddhists and cats living there and then