Thailand Day 5 Grand Palace and Buddhas Galore

Tuesday May 10^th

This morning I took two half day tours with two different groups of people but the same guide for the whole day. The morning was spent at the Grand Palace and the afternoon was a tour of three major temples in Bangkok.

The Grand Palace is where the royal family of Thailand used to live. But now no one lives there, it is sometimes used for special occasions or when royalty from other countries come to Bangkok they stay at the guest house on the grounds. Queen Elizabeth stayed there and a few other European monarchs. The place is really over the top. It is so ornate, colourful and the grounds are so full of beautiful buildings and temples that it is hard to photograph. There are statues of characters that I can only compare to comic book characters. In one of the temples in the Grand Palace, there is a famous large statue of Buddha called the Emerald Buddha, which is in fact green but made from one large piece of jade, not emerald.

After the tour we were taken to a Gem Store, billed as the largest jewelry store in the world. First we saw a short film that claimed that Thailand is the best place to find rubies and sapphires in the world. When we came out of that, we walked through a room full of jewellers making jewelry. It looked like a large sweat shop, there had to be thirty people sitting in little booths plying there trade. After that came the showroom, which was full of displays of beautiful, expensive things. But, for me the best part was the large amazing salt water fish tanks they had behind a number of the booths. One had six two foot black tipped reef sharks swimming round and round. Then came the souvenir shop before we emerged out the other side to find our guide and van. Needless to say, I bought nothing. I actually kind of resented by bused there in the first place. However,....

I had time for a quick sandwich for a market, before my guide and I met up with our new van and new group of people (who happened to be five obnoxious young Indians, an older Nepalese couple, of which the man never listened to the guide and then asked questions of what she just said, and a very quiet Chinese couple, and me.

We went to three temples with impossibly long names, which I only remember because I took photos of the entrance names: Wat Traimit Witthayaram Wora Wiharn, Wat Phrachetuphon Wimonmangkhalaram Ratchaworamahawiharn and Wat Benchamabophit Dusitwanaram Ratchaworawiharn. Yikes!

The first one called Wat Traimit for short, featured a 12.5 ft by 15.5 ft statue of Buddha that they originally found discovered in a deserted temple, in 1931. They moved it to Bangkok and placed it in this temple. In 1955 there was a crack in the plaster and they discovered that the plaster hid a solid gold statue weighing 5 tons. Apparently it had been covered with plaster to hide it from the Burmese enemy when they were fighting with the Siamese (Thais). There are also two others of note, one of which is about 10ft tall and commands the entrance of another temple. There are many buildings in this temple and lots of Buddha images.

The second temple features a huge reclining Buddha. He is posed lying on his right side with his head propped up with his hand. It's about 25 metres long and is partially hidden by the support walls in the temple, of which there are four. This one also contains many other Buddha statues, including both the one in the fourth picture and the one in the glorious room in the fifth photo.

The third temple is called the Marble Temple, because it's constructed of imported Italian marble. It is the only temple in Thailand built from marble. It too features a large beautiful gold statue of Buddha in a Japanese style.

After that, we again went to the gem store, only this time my guide immediately put me on a van for the ride back to my hotel. When I got there I had a swim in the pool, and then went for a walk around the neighbourhood exploring the night life a bit. I stopped and had dinner at a local restaurant in a touristy area and then came back to blog and sleep.