American Tourists in Bangkok

Mary and George had figured they would make it to Bangkok before they ended their adventure in Thailand, but weren't too eager to undertake the trip.  Bangkok had 5.7 million people in 2011 according to Thai Government statistics; the Bangkok Metropolitan Area had 10.4 million - 1 of every 12 inhabitants of the entire kingdom.  It seemed pretty intimidating compared to peaceful Khemmarat.

But we were to have a visitor from America and she was flying into Bangkok, so we planned on meeting her at the airport and spending a few days in Bangkok before heading to Khemmarat for a few quiet days.  We have known Gretchen for almost 40 years; she has spent most of the last 30 Thanksgivings with us in Washington, DC.  She lives in Boston and her travel time to Thailand was about 25 hours.  We so admired and appreciated her willingness to make the trip to see us and Thailand!

George was in Thailand for a few months with the US Air Force in 1970 and got to visit Bangkok a couple of times.  He remembers lots of tuk-tuks and traffic.  Bangkok has changed significantly since then -- it now has subways, elevated trains and highways, huge shopping malls, and traffic to rival Washington, DC.  But it still has tuk-tuks and, like most of the rest of Thailand, lots of sidewalk restaurants and vendors.

We stayed at the Hotel De' Moc near the Old City and could walk to lots of the tourist attractions.  Elephants welcomed us to our rooms.

Friday, March 22
 
Wat Tri Thotsathep

Bangkok has many, very beautiful Buddhist temples -- must-see attractions for any tourist.  Our hotel was across the street from Wat Tri Thotsathep, so that was our first stop on the tourist path.

[Note: For those with more than a visual interest in the sights of Bangkok, some background information will be provided in blue.] Excerpted from Wikipedia:  Multiple roof tiers are an important element of the Thai temple. Two or three tiers are most often used, but some royal temples have four. The use of multiple roof tiers is more aesthetic than functional. Dynamic visual rhythms are created by these multiple tiers, breaks and tier patterns. Most decorations are attached to the long, thin panel on the edge of the roof at the gable ends.The decorative structure is sculpted in an undulating, serpentine shape evoking the nāga (a large snake featured on many temples that represents the snake that protected the Buddha while he meditated during a great storm). Its lower finial is called a hang hong, which usually takes the form of a naga's head turned up and facing away from the roof. A roof with multiple breaks or tiers has identical hang hong finials at the bottom of each section. Perched on the peak of the lamyong is the large curving ornament called a chofah, which resembles the beak of a bird.

Mary and Gretchen walk in the shade of an inner courtyard.

The Buddha

The Chedi, or stupa, which contains relics of the Buddha or of revered monks

As we walked on from that temple, we passed over a khlong.  Some khlongs are artificial canals, but many are feeders to rivers such as the Chao Phraya.  Very little space is wasted in Bangkok, as you can see.

The ladies did some "window" shopping as we walked.

Our next destination on the trip that day was Phra Sumen Fort and the Suan Santichaiparkran Park next to which it sits.  During the reign of King Rama I (1782-1809), fourteen forts were built to protect the borders of the Old City.  Most have disappeared over the years: only two remain. This fort is made of concrete in a hexagonal shape with battlements.

One border of the park is a khlong and another is the Chao Phraya River, the major river through Bangkok.

Behind Gretchen and Mary and spanning the Chao Phraya River is the Rama VIII Bridge.

This tree was blooming in the park.  We have seen this same tree blooming in the past week or two in Khemmarat as well, despite the very dry past several months.  The flowers look like wisteria although they are yellow, not lavender.  The sign we saw by the tree was mostly in Thai but we saw these words in the English alphabet:  LEGUMINOSAE - CAESALPINIOIDEAE and Golden shower (how appropriate!), Indian laburnum, Pudding - pine tree.

As we walked on, we saw a restaurant stand on the sidewalk - quite a few choices there!

It's hot in Bangkok this time of year and, at this point of our day, we were persuaded by a tuk-tuk driver to take his tour.  We saw some things we wanted to see and some things (Thai Export Company selling gems and Thai Fashion Shop selling clothes) that he wanted us to see (and for which we present no photos) so that he could get a coupon for gas discounts.

Wat Indraviharn

The first stop was the Wat Indraviharn, which is very close to the Rama VIII Bridge.  This temple is known for its 32m-tall Buddha statue, said to be one of  the tallest Buddha images in Thailand.

Wat Benchamabophit (Marble Temple)

This was the last major temple to be built in central Bangkok.  It was commissioned in 1899 by King Rama V and designed by his brother Prince Naris and Italian architect Hercules Manfredi.  The nickname for the temple is derived from the gray Carrara marble used to clad the walls of the Ubosot.  The bot also includes Victorian-style stained-glass windows depicting scenes from Thai mythology.

 

The Buddha image in the temple is a copy of a revered 14th-century Buddha image created during the time of the Sukhotai kingdom, the first notable kingdom of the Thai people.  The base contains the ashes of Rama V.  This Buddha image was one of the most striking that we have seen in Thailand.

This is one of the sets of doors in the temple inlaid with mother-of-pearl that were salvaged from a temple in Ayutthaya, the successor capital to Sukhothai in the mid-15th century.

The ceiling too was a very impressive sight.

 

We saw the silhouette of a man praying before a monk as we left the temple.

 

In the cloister behind the Ubosot are 53 different Buddha images (33 originals and 20 copies) from around Thailand and other Buddhist countries, assembled by Rama V.

In a niche in the back exterior wall of the Ubosot is this Buddha image.  It looks old and interesting, but we haven't been able to find information about it.

 

Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo (Temple of  the Emerald Buddha)

This is Thailand's biggest tourist attraction and it's easy to understand why: it is a wonderland of beauty and spectacle.  This 233-acre compound in the heart of Bangkok was established in 1782 after King Rama I ascended to  the throne.  It encompasses the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the former residence of the king of Thailand, a coronation hall and a royal funerary hall, government offices, and gardens.  This aerial view is courtesy of khonthaitour.com.






Here is a photo of Gretchen as we first arrived.  The building with the blue roof directly behind her head is the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. 

On the left are three spires representing the changing centers of Buddhist influence.  The one closest to Gretchen is the Phra Sri Rattana Chedi, a 19th-century chedi in Sri Lankan style enshrining ashes of the Buddha.  The middle spire is Phra Mondop, a library built by Rama I in Thai style, which houses sacred Buddhist manuscripts.  The third is the Royal Pantheon, built in Khmer style and housing bronze and gold statues of past kings of the Chakri dynasty, of which the current King Rama IX, is  the latest.
 

The Phra Sri Rattana Chedi is covered with golden mosaic tiles imported from Italy at the command of King Rama V.

The Phra Mondop houses the first fully-revised edition of the Buddhist canon of the Rattanakosin Era known as the "Royal Golden Edition."  Stairways to Phra Mondop are guarded at both sides by demons cast in metal. The outer walls are in "Thepphanom" design with gold and glass decorations.  The seven-tiered roof is topped by a soaring glass-decorated spire and supported by twenty glass-inlaid stucco pillars with lotus capitals.

The Royal Pantheon is also known as Prasat Phra Thep Bidon, which means "The Shrine of the celestial Ancestors."

 
In among the spires is a large scale-model of Angkor Wat. It was commissioned by King Rama IV to allow the people of Siam to see the wonders of the land held under the king's dominion. Much of early Thai architecture is greatly influenced by Khmer style. Even though the next Thai ruler, Rama V, was forced to cede Cambodia to France to maintain Siamese independence, the model remains on the grounds of the Grand Palace.

View of the roof of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha:

This is a view of the back of  the Temple:

In the foreground is a statue of an herbal healer and a symbol of his tools -- a mortar and pestle

The temple is protected by a pair of yakshis, standing some 16 feet tall.  From Wikipedia: In Buddhist literature, the yakṣa are the attendants of Vaisravana, the Guardian of the Northern Quarter, a beneficent god who protects the righteous.

 

In front of the Temple:

 

Below, a kinnari.  According to Wikipedia: In Southeast Asian mythology, Kinnaris, the female counterparts of Kinnaras, are depicted as half-bird, half-woman creatures. They have the head, torso, and arms of a woman and the wings, tail and feet of a swan. The kinnari is renowned for her dance, song and poetry, and is a traditional symbol of feminine beauty, grace and accomplishment.

The Emerald Buddha:  

According to Wikipedia:  

Legend and History

According to legend, the Emerald Buddha was created in India in 43 BC. The legend states that, after remaining in India for three hundred years, it was taken to Sri Lanka and then to Cambodia. When the Thais captured Angkor Wat in 1432, the Emerald Buddha was taken to Chiang Rai, where the ruler of the city hid it. 

Historical sources indicate that the statue surfaced in northern Thailand in the Lannathai kingdom in 1434. One account of its discovery is that lightning struck a pagoda in a temple in Chiang Rai, after which something became visible beneath the stucco. The Buddha was dug out, and the people believed the figurine to be made of emerald, hence its name. According to a less fanciful explanation, "emerald" here simply means "green coloured" in Thai.  King Sam Fang Kaen of Lannathai wanted it in his capital, Chaing Mai, but the elephant carrying it insisted, on three separate occasions, on going instead to Lampang. This was taken as a divine sign and the Emerald Buddha stayed in Lampang until 1468, when it was finally moved to Chiang Mai, where it was kept at Wat Chedi Luang (see Mary and George's post, "More Adventures in Chiang Mai," of November 10, 2012).
The Emerald Buddha remained in Chiang Mai until 1552, when it was taken to Laos. In 1564, King Setthathirath moved it to his new capital at Vientiane.  In 1779, Thai General Chao Phraya Chakri put down an insurrection, captured Vientiane and returned the Emerald Buddha to Siam, taking it with him to Thonburi. After he became King Rama I of Thailand, he moved the Emerald Buddha with great ceremony to its current home on 22 March 1784. It is now kept in the main building of the temple, the Ubosot.

Clothing

Although the Emerald Buddha is really jade,  it is adorned with garments made of gold. There are three different sets of gold clothing, which are changed by the King of Thailand or a liaison (recently, because of the King's age, the Crown Prince) in a ceremony at the changing of the seasons – in the 1st Waning of Lunar Months 4, 8 and 12 (around March, July and November). The three sets of gold garments correspond to Thailand's summer season, rainy season, and cool season. [The clothing in the photo above is the summer set.]

The walls around the exterior of the Temple are decorated in Chinese porcelain.

Beyond the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the Grand Palace also includes other wonders.  This is the Throne Palace.  (Note that the official residence of the Thai monarch is now Chitralada Palace, but the Grand Palace is still used for official events. Several royal ceremonies and state functions are held within the walls of the palace every year.)

Here we are with Don, our guide for the tour of this amazing place.  Don has been doing these tours for 50 years and was an amazing font of information.  He will probably never see this blog post, but, if he did, I fear he would find a number of mistakes.  (Thanks, Gretchen, for getting this picture.)

There are strict clothing requirements for visiting the Grand Palace -- no short pants or sleeveless tops.  We take it that many tourists show up without the proper attire and have to make adjustments to go on the tour.  Apparently that creates a business opportunity.  While the ladies were checking out a shop right outside the Grand Palace, George had an opportunity to watch the crowd.and saw one young man cross the street from the Grand Palace complex, take off a pair of long, loose pants, give them to the guy in the green shirt below, and get some money back from him (his security deposit most likely).  The woman below was folding up the clothes as they were returned.

After a long, hot, busy day, we returned to our hotel and saw a beautiful sunset over the temple at which we had begun the day.

Saturday, March 23

We started out on foot again and saw some beautiful flowers right outside our hotel entrance.

We crossed the khlong again and came to the Democracy Monument.

 

The monument sits in the middle of a busy traffic circle.  It was commissioned in 1939 to commemorate the 1932 Siamese coup d'etat that led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in what was then the Kingdom of Siam, by its military ruler, known as Phibun. 

Kao San Road

We walked to Kao San Road, which is popular among backpackers and is known for cheap accommodations and many inexpensive shopping opportunities.

Jim Thompson House

Gretchen's one request for our tour in Bangkok was to visit the Jim Thompson house.  George had read a lot about it and thought that was a great idea.  Thompson was an American who came to Thailand in 1945 as the Bangkok head of the OSS.  In 1948, he founded the Thai Silk Company, Ltd.  The silk industry in Thailand had declined dramatically during WWII and Thompson is credited with its revival.  He became a social celebrity in Bangkok.  He dismantled six traditional teak houses in 1959 and reassembled them in an unconventional layout amidst a flower-filled garden.  He filled his house with antiquities and artwork from all over Southeast Asia.  He disappeared mysteriously on Easter Sunday in 1967 while on a trip to Malaysia.  A visit to his house includes a visit to a shop with some of the beautiful handiwork of the Thai Silk Company.  Unfortunately, no photography is permitted in the house itself. so these photos don't really give a sense of the house interior.

As one enters the complex, there is a display of silk-making (pictures of cocoons below) and beautiful Thai dancing by some young Thai women.

This torso, made of limestone, is displayed in the garden of the house.  Dating from the early Dvaravati period (7th century), it is said to be one of the oldest surviving Buddha images in Southeast Asia.

We had lunch before the ladies headed to the shop.

 The Jim Thompson House is very close to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, so we happened on that without a plan to visit it, but it was well worth the time, with its free exhibits, interesting shops, and pleasant cafes.

One particularly interesting exhibit was work by Belgian artist, Christian Develter, who has lived in Thailand for over 15 years.  Apparently inspired by his work among the Chin peoples of Burma whose women have traditionally tattooed their faces, he did a number of dramatic paintings of modern women with stylized tattoos.

Then we headed out and found a tuk-tuk back to our hotel.

Sunday, March 24

Wat Pho

For our last day as tourists in Bangkok, we decided to head to Wat Pho, the oldest and largest temple in Bangkok and the home of the famed (and very large - 150-feet-long) Reclining Buddha.  We took a tuk-tuk to the temple.  As  we looked for the entrance, another tuk-tuk driver approached and offered to take us on a tour of other spots saying Wat Pho wouldn't open until later in the day.   George was going to accept that, but Mary said let's check with this guard over here.  The tuk-tuk driver disappeared and, sure enough, the guard said, of course the temple is open for visitors now.  George is still trying to get over someone looking him in the face and lying straight out.  Lesson: be wary of tuk-tuk drivers in Bangkok.

In the 1780s, Rama I rebuilt the original 16th-century temple on this site.  In 1832 Rama III built the chapel that houses the Reclining Buddha and turned the temple into a place of learning.  Today, Wat Pho is a traditional medicine center, including the famous Institute of Massage.

There are several miniature stone mountains in the temple complex .  The statues of Thai hermits (called ruessi datton) are posed in different positions of healing massage. These Thai hermits used to live in the mountains and forests of Thailand long ago and practice meditation.  It is believed that they used Thai massage and a form of Thai yoga to keep physically fit and to balance out the hardships of sitting motionless for long periods of time in meditation. Students at Wat Pho study the statues to help learn proper massage techniques.
 

 

Wat Pho has the largest collection of Buddha images in Thailand, more than 1,000 statues.  Here are just a few.

 

Large Chinese sculptures like the one below are scattered around the complex.  We were told they were used as ballast for ships returning from China after dropping off  Thai goods.

Wat Pho's Ubosot houses a bronze meditating Buddha salvaged from Ayutthaya of the 15th and 16th century.  The remains of Rama I are interred in the base of the Buddha image.

 

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Bangkok in November 2012, before a trip to Myanmar and an ASEAN Summit in Cambodia.  The first stop in Bangkok was Wat Pho.  They saw the Reclining Buddha (see below) but our tour guide told us that the President had asked specifically to see a wall stone from which a rubbing had been made and given to him in college by his roommate.  The guide told us this was the stone:

 

Among the teaching tools in the complex are stone plaques showing massage points.

 

There are inscriptions providing explanations of the diagrams.

The 150-feet-long Reclining Buddha fills a Wiharn in one corner of the complex.  The figure is made of plaster around a brick core and finished in gold leaf.  It illustrates the passing of the Buddha into nirvana.

Mother-of-pearl was used to ornament the soles of the Buddha's feet.  The soles of the feet are divided into  108 panels, which display the auspicious signs (called lakshanas) by which Buddha can be identified, including flowers, dancers, white elephants, tigers, and altar accessories.  The number 108 is a spiritually significant number in most world religions.

Below is a close-up of the elephant image in the lower right of the photo above.

Visitors can buy a package of small coins for 20 Baht (about 70 cents) and drop the coins into the 108 pots shown below as they work their way out of the Wiharn.  The collective sound of many people doing that is not unlike rainfall.

Ceramics decorating one of four pagodas in the complex.:

After our tour of Wat Pho, we had lunch at our hotel and then got a taxi to Don Mueang Airport for our flight to Isaan. 

We spent a few days in Khemmarat showing Gretchen the rural side of Thai life.  (We'll report on that in a later Khemmarat update post.)  She and George flew back to Bangkok for Gretchen to get her flight home.  Mary was supposed to go that trip as well but she caught a cold and sinus infection either in Bangkok or on the flight home, so she was excused from the trip back to Bangkok.

Gretchen and George had several hours before leaving for the airport for her flight so decided to walk to a nearby shopping mall in the downtown section of Bangkok.  We noted the electrical infrastructure,

some of the older architecture,

and some of the newer.

Gretchen was delighted when she found a Jim Thompson store in the mall we visited.

 We saw that downtown vehicular traffic can be heavy,

as can sidewalk pedestrian traffic.

Vendors set up shop on most every sidewalk we walked down,

in some cases, forcing pedestrians into the streets.

But it can make it convenient to grab a quick bite to eat.

Gretchen made it off on her flight that night and hopefully has adjusted to the trip home by now.  We hope this blog post will bring back many good memories for her.

George stayed one more night in Bangkok and went up to the rooftop pool and saw these views -- beautiful!