Bangkok greatest hits

  Bangkok, Thailand
Saturday, September 1, 2007

Greatest Hits Bangkok

As promised less waffle and more pictures.

1) Buddhism and the King.

The thais have impressed us as a stable, level-headed people striveing for happiness in their daily lives. They are largely very forthcoming, helpful, natural, outgoing, inquisitive and friendly just to name a few traits we have come to experience. We've been approache by quite a few very lovely Thais. These meetings have always led to special and unique experiences off the well trodden tourist path. We are grateful for every one of these encounters and think back to and look forward to these meetings.

We think that the firm basis that Thais stand on is in part due to their reverence of Buddha (95% of Thais are Buddhists, most of them practising in some way). Buddhism promotes values that can be found throughout the big religions and that are e.g. very similar to our "Christian values" based on the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and Jesus' teachings. Although Buddhism works on a personal spiritual level very roughly aimed at striving for enlightenment, doing good in view to reincarnation and meditation rather than praying to a deity/God, they base their religion firmly on a teacher, the Buddha, not unlike other great teachers like Jesus or Mohammed.

The other great figure of stability is their King, now 60 years as head of the Constitutional Monarchy of Thailand. The Government changes, most recently last year through a "revolution" by the military. This has not affected the public life or tourism. Probably because Thais largely concentrate on a near religious reverence of their King. They wear yellow shirts symbolising the King or blue shirts supporting the Queen, and hang coloured flags out. Nobody speaks out against the Royal Famiily and even stepping on a coin or bank note, thus on a portrait of the King, is illegal and punishable by law.


2) House shrines. Lots of them abound, House shrines, street shrines, quarter shrines, temples, I guess that would be the hierarchy. Gifts are left for the Buddha. This could be some fruit or a drink, in temples it's money, ornate handmade flower wreaths up to baskets full of household goodies like toilet paper, toothbrushes, crackers, noodles, etc. This is for the monks' use, though. Monks depend on the population for food. They have some money, but not much and little wordly belongings. A typical morning scene are the younger monks carrying a big basket through the streets around 6.00 am (when everyone in Southeast Asia is already on the go, mainly cause it's too darn hot to do anything worthwhile in the midday heat). They collect food from the people to feed the monks. Having said that, there are new classes of monks emerging: the cell phone monk and the ipod monk. It's incredible what they can fit into their little orange bags. More on monks in Chiang Mai.


3) Royal Temple and Royal Palace. A must see. Although the royal Family don't actually live in the palace anymore most of the palace is out of bounds for visitors. But the outside area is beautiful and there is access to 2 throne rooms, a weapons collection and a few less important rooms. The royal Temple is splendid. All sorts of different Temple Architecture has found its way into the enclosure and there's even a small model of Angkor Wat, the Cambodian/Khmer ueber-tempel city  ironically successfully sacked and pillaged by the Thais in the 13th century (I believe). It's a must see and for many visitors it will be the first contact with practised Buddhism.



4) Wat Po, also known as the Temple of the lying Buddha. This is a truly megalomaniac monolithic masterpiece of shiny Bronze, 40 meters long, 15 meters high. Another must-see. Yet don't miss the stroll around the vast grounds and numerous smaller temples at Wat Po (which also houses what is probably the world's largest collection of bronze Buddhas). There are hundreds of them. we loved it here...


5) ...whereas Bjorn loved the Golden Buddha: 5 tons of massive golden chubbiness accidentally rediscovered by a clumsy Abbott who accidentally chipped a bit of plasterwork off what was till then believed to have been a simple stone Buddha only to reveal the gleaming shimmer of gold (probably covered to keep it from getting nicked by those nasty Khmers or Burmese of conflicts long gone. The Wenzels' impression was that, yes, it gleams, but it was the roundabout 657th Buddha we'd seen by then and we could no longer be impressed.

Seeing our first game of Thai football in the school next door was much more exciting. This is a mix of holding up the ball and beachvolleyball. The ball is kept in the air by a 2-player-team in a small field only with the feet and eventually kicked over a lower-than-badminton net to score points in the oponents' field. Quite tricky. The other national past-times are Thai boxing, cock fighting (probably illegal) and soccer. Thais get all the English Premiership goals and know heaps of players, have a favorite English team and have put me to shame with their knowledge of international soccer teams. It will only be a matter of years and they'll be in the World Cup. Talking of which I hope the all blacks do well tonight agains South Africa in the Rigby World Cup...  
What I'm really trying to say is: wherever you are in Southeast Asia, there'll be millions of temples. Preselect carefully or else you'll quickly get templed out.