--<*>--
Wat Pra Kaeuw (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) is simply spectacular. It ranks
up there with the Alhambra in Granada as one of the most beautiful man-made
places I've ever seen.
The Emerald Buddha is only a couple of feet tall and is not actually made of
emerald (it's either jasper or jade), but it's become the symbol of the Thai
nation, so it gets the most special temple. Like all *wats*, it's in a complex
of buildings, all decorated with golden statuary and porcelain and mirror-glass
mosaic work. The Thais try to enforce a certain amount of decorum appropriate
to a sacred place, despite the mob of tourists, including a strict dress code
-- loaner clothing is available to cover up people not thought to be dressed
appropriately. Shoes must be removed before entering the sanctuary, and you
have to kneel or sit with your feet pointed away from the Buddha.
The sanctuary is small by the standards of Christian churches -- it's such an
important place, but can hold perhaps a couple hundred people at a time, tops.
Buddhist ritual apparently does not involve gathering large congregations. The
Emerald Buddha sits atop a steep stepped platform, each level crowded with
other, lesser, sacred images, including quite a few more Buddha images -- the
effect is something of a very tall jumbled pile of statuary, so tall that the
Emerald Buddha itself is rather hard to see. But the building that houses it
is magnificent.
--<*>--
Wat Po (Temple of the Reclining Buddha) is just down the road, and if anything
suffers from a worse mob of tourists than Wat Pra Kaeuw. There was an endless
row of big air-conditioned tourist coaches lined up outside the place. (Oddly,
notwithstanding this fact, no fewer than three tuk-tuk drivers intercepted me
on my way toward the gate and tried to persuade me that the place was closed
for a Buddhist holy day. As best I can tell, all tuk-tuk drivers are lying
weasels who live only to drag as many tourists as possible to gem dealers and
silk factories.)
According to my guidebook, the Reclining Buddha itself -- a figure of the
Buddha stretched out on his side full length, propped up on one elbow -- is
46 m long and 15 m high -- that's half a football field long and a good four
stories tall. It's finished in gold leaf except for the huge flat bottoms of
his feet, which are done as a mosaic of images from his life, in
mother-of-pearl. Unfortunately, the building housing this immense figure is
not much larger than the figure itself, so you can't get far enough away to
really take in the whole thing; making matters worse, there are a large number
of pillars blocking what sight lines you can get. Further, they were doing
major work on the roof, so every open space in the place was filled with
scaffolding, and if that wasn't enough, the mob of tourists was so dense you
couldn't even stop to peer in the few remaining places where you could actually
see the Buddha. The Reclining Buddha, sadly, was a total waste of time.
Fortunately, the rest of Wat Po was still pretty interesting. The place has no
fewer than four big chedis (meaning six or eight storeys tall) and 91 smaller
ones. A chedi is a peculiar sort of Buddhist monument, roughly conical in
shape -- actually more like a giant ribbed handbell than anything. Supposedly
they each enclose a relic of the Buddha, though considering the number of these
things in Bangkok alone, the Buddhists must be even more optimistic about
relics than the Catholics.
At any rate, the courtyards of Wat Po are something of a forest of these
things, interspersed with a dozen or so leafy vertical rock gardens, maybe
twice my height tall, displaying collections of small limestone statuary. Away
from the main entrance and the hall of the Reclining Buddha, the place can
actually be quite peaceful, in a surreal kind of way.
--<*>--
My greatest addiction here has become Thai-style iced-tea -- I've been drinking
two or three of these things a day. They're sold from sidewalk carts all over
Bangkok, 25 cents. You start with a 12-oz can or jar, and add one part
condensed milk, one part sugar, and two or three parts strong hot tea, near
boiling. Stir, then dump into a bag of crushed ice and serve with a straw.
Takeaway drinks are served in bags here. It takes a bit of getting used to,
but it mostly works. You can even set an iced tea down, if you're careful,
because there's so much crushed ice it gives some shape to the drink.
--<*>--
Every single mailbox in Bangkok claims to be emptied at 11 am and 3 pm. That
must be quite a trick -- I'd like to see it.
--<*>--
I went down to Patpong last night to see the stupid human tricks, because it's
something you have to do. I admit, the one with the blowgun and the balloons
was kind of impressive and the one with the chopsticks looked anatomically
impossible, but the one with the bottlecaps just looked plain painful and the
rest weren't very interesting.
I was surprised by how dense Patpong district is -- it's basically a one-block
length of a single side street. Every square foot of the street is filled with
a night market selling watches and silk and CDs and T-shirts and all the usual
night market crap, and the buildings lining both sides are full of girlie bars.
The street was so crowded you can't even walk, but only kind of shuffle into
any open space that becomes available. As a lone male, the touts were on me
like flies, and when I consented to be dragged into a bar, the girls took over.
They lied about there not being a cover charge, and I have never in my life
had tips so bluntly demanded of me. I nursed a beer for a while, but
eventually got stressed out enough I left without finishing it. It took ten
minutes to fight my way free of the block, and when I got to the street, all of
the taxi drivers wanted 3-5 times the proper fare. I wound up having to take
the skytrain to another station to get to a place where I could find a driver
who would consent to use his meter. I didn't finally relax until two or three
hours later.
I suppose I had to do it once, but never again.
--<*>--
This morning, it was temples again. Wat Kalaya Nimit (Temple of Good Friends)
is quite imposing from the riverside, but it's off the tourist circuit. My
guidebook didn't have much to say about it except that it houses a giant seated
Buddha and is in an old Portuguese neighbourhood. The compound is much
smaller and simpler than those of Wat Pra Kaeuw or Wat Po -- it's a city temple
instead of a national one -- but because it's not a tourist attraction I got to
get a glimpse of Thais being themselves.
The sanctuary contains, as the book says, an immense golden seated Buddha,
surrounded by a jumble of smaller statues, altar tables, sacrifice plates piled
high with orchids and fruit and strings of yellow carnations, bells, drums and
offering boxes. There were at least a dozen different such boxes, all labelled
differently in Thai -- I have no idea what they were for. I sat quietly in the
corner for a while, and a steady trickle of Thais came through, one or two at a
time, and abased themselves before the Buddha. Some laid sacrifices on the
altars; some made cash offerings and rang the gongs or thumped the bells or
lit sticks of incense. A couple took containers from the back of the room that
contained a few dozen chopstick-like sticks. They knelt and chanted and
loosely shook the containers until one of the chopsticks came out, and then
read what was inscribed on the stick. I can only assume it was a kind of
fortune-telling ritual.
After Wat Kalaya Nimit, I wandered through the lanes of the Portuguese quarter
until I found Wat Prayoon. I'd looked for it because of a cryptic note on my
Bangkok guide map labelling it as "Wat Prayoon (thousands of turtles!)". So I
had to see what that might mean, and it was in fact beyond anything I'd guessed
at.
Wat Prayoon is home to what its monks call "Turtle Mountain", and which is so
fantastic I'm not sure I'm capable of describing it. One corner of the wat,
maybe 100 m square, is enclosed in a stucco wall. It contains an irregularly
shaped lagoon, surrounded by rock gardens and trees and monuments and small
pavilions, no two alike. The rocks and monuments and pavilions are all covered
with candles and small vases and are inlaid liberally with marble plaques a
little bigger than a handspan; each marble plaque has a person's picture and a
Thai inscription engraved in gold -- I presume they are memorials.
In the middle of the lagoon is a 30-40' mountain made of odd-shaped rocks
cemented together; there's a tunnel underneath it, chambers cut into it, and a
path that winds its way to the top. Clinging to its sides are miniature
buildings, some of which look like Tibetan mountain temples and some of which
look like nothing so much as suburban homes; all of these contain more little
vases and marble plaques.
The murky water of the lagoon itself is absolutely crammed to bursting with
turtles. In one corner I counted 30 before losing track; there could easily
be a thousand in all. There are small ones no bigger than your palm and big
old mossy-backed giants that probably weigh 50 pounds and all sizes in between.
In places where they crawl out to sun themselves, they wind up climbing on
top of each other -- turtle dogpiles.
I tell you, for surreal park design, Walt Disney doesn't have nothing on Thai
Buddhists.
There's a booth at one end selling plates of cut-up fruits and vegetables, and
I saw several Thais sitting around the lagoon, methodically feeding turtles. A
few monks wandered around watering plants, and a few laypeople were noisily
involved in a construction project at one end.
I sat there for the better part of an hour, watching the turtles, and didn't
see a single other white face. For some inexplicable reason, this prodigy of a
place is not mentioned in any of the standard guidebooks, and is not on the
tourist circuit.
--<*>--
There are other things I've seen that I'd kind of like to yammer about, but
this is already far too long.
I'm leaving tomorrow after noon, headed to the Cambodian border. There's still
easily another week's worth of things I'd like to do in Bangkok, but time
passes. (Three weeks gone, now -- seems like longer.) Early Sunday, I'm on a
bus for the long ride to Angkor Wat. By all accounts, the roads will be
spectacularly awful. Wish me luck.
c.
--
colin | opportunity calls from a payphone, bruno. you never
roald | get a chance to call it back. (christopher baldwin)
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