The Buddha with offerings of flowers — a sight we have now seen many times!
Having given you our low down on Angkor Wat in Cambodia, let’s look at some living Wats in Thailand. We have seen so many, and given our now slight jadedness at the idolatry, we no longer step into every temple that we pass, including some of the “must do’s” in Bangkok. But before we get to Bangkok, let’s go to Chiang Mai, where we spent 8 days.
Chiang Mai
Rising above the ancient walled city of Chiang Mai, the mountain called Doi Suthep rises up over 1000 meters. Near the top is Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a temple constructed in the 13th century to house a relic of the lord Buddha (half his shoulder bone, according to legend). The story goes that the relic was placed on a white elephant who was let loose in the jungle to find a good place for a temple. The elephant climbed the mountain, stopped near the top, trumpeted, and fell down dead — which was considered an omen that this was the correct place for a temple.
Like most Buddhist temples we have seen, this one has grown over the ages and now contains not only the original gold-plated stupa with the relic, but multiple buddha images, pagodas, bells and shrines, all glittering with gold, sparkles, flowers, and incense. And, of course, the stairs at the entrance (these ones with gaudy dragon decorations).
No, we don’t know the guy in the picture, but there were too many tourists at this “holiest” spot of the stupa to get a photo without anyone!
Here are just a few of the other Buddha statues we saw at Doi Suthep:
a model of the emerald buddha
a standing buddha
The laughing Buddha (with a few other statues!)
Doi Suthep also houses a monastery, and we were amused by the evidence of this we saw — dormitories with the ubiquitous saffron-colored robes hanging out to dry, as well as signs in the public toilets next to the Mens and Womens toilets, saying “Reserved for Monks.”
It turns out monks are well-respected and honored in all of the countries we have visited. We saw many signs indicating areas reserved for monks, noticed that the monks rode mass transit for free, and saw that people cheerfully gave way to monks whenever opportunity arose. Most of the monks we met were studying at university, but none of them could say whether they would be monks for the rest of their lives. A life-long commitment is apparently not needed.
In addition to Doi Suthep, we also stepped into a few other temples in Chiang Mai, but the only memorable one was the main temple in town. Normally it costs money for foreigners to view the temple, but we were looking for the “chat with a monk” session and went into the temple next door by mistake. A friendly monk took pity on us and escorted us through the “Locals Only” door into the main temple with a brief word to the security guard, and escorted us over to the monk chat, where we talked with three or four different monks, some with much better grasp of English than others!
Marsha made Mike sit next to the monk because of the tradition that monks should not touch women!
Bangkok
By the time we got to Bangkok we were not keen to see too many more Buddhas, but we did decide to go to Wat Pho. Who would not want to see the little toe of a giant reclining buddha 150 feet long?
The funny story is that while we were walking to Wat Pho, we were approached by a gentleman who told us that the Wat was closed until 2 p.m. for prayers, but we should go see the standing buddha, and the golden buddha, and the silk factories, and if we took a blue tuk tuk it would only cost 200 baht (about $6), and look, here’s a blue tuk tuk.
We still don’t know if this was a kind soul or a scam (we suspect the latter), but we ended up taking the tuk-tuk and visiting more temples. The bright side was that during the 3 hour tuk-tuk ride the skies opened to some torrential rain, but we simply waited it out at a temple and accepted the ministrations of our tuk-tuk driver as he held umbrellas over our head.
By the time we made it to Wat Pho, the sun was out again–and so were the tourists. We were herded into the hall where the reclining Buddha is. And we have to admit — it was pretty awesome!
And, like other wats, there was plenty of other Buddhas to see at Wat Pho, too:
We have plenty more pictures, but we think you may have gotten the idea — we’ve seen a LOT of buddha statues in Thailand!
Green Edges 