Bangkok - Wat Pho, Art Gallery, Siam Museum

We slept late and didn't get out until 11am for our first day sightseeing in Bangkok. Our first destination of the day was Wat Pho, which we reached by boat bus. We were confused at first by the lack of either skytrain or metro to our part of town, but the boat service, along with local buses, provides the old city with fine public transit. The boats are like another line in the skytrain-metro network.

Wat Pho was incredible. It reminded me a little of Mata Temple in Amritsar, India, with all the mirrored tiles, but it also looked and felt like a temple complex, compared with Mata, which felt more like something that belonged in a theme park. Inside the largest building was the famous Reclining Buddha. According to Lonely Planet, it is 46m long and 15m high, yes, meters not feet. It is enormous and hardly fits in its temple. This Buddha would make Michaelangelo's David's Goliath look puny. The body is covered in gold leaf, while the feet are mother-of-pearl inlay.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

The complex also had tons of less interesting Buddhas on display...

From Drop Box

Fancy doors...

From Drop Box

I forget what these things are, but there were a lot of them and their shape is symbolic of something to do with Buddha...

From Drop Box

And really nice guardian statues.

From 102_PANA

Wat Pho also has a history (and I think current use) as a school and repository of knowledge about Thai traditional medicine, including massage. There were tons of diagrams of the human body like this one. There were also statues demonstrating yoga and massage techniques.

From 102_PANA

After, we wondered along in search of the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, which together are Bangkok's biggest attraction. We stopped for lunch nearby, where Mary enjoyed sticky rice and something satay-like (but without peanut sauce), while Josh had some "Chicken Curry." It seems to be difficult getting names for anything beyond meat type, "curry," and "Pad Thai." I guess most tourists don't know Thai food all that well (which makes me wonder what exactly inspires them to go to Thailand). After we ate, Josh managed, with some effort, to figure out which "chicken curry" was the massaman. Maybe next time...

Also along the way we stopped and purchased some Thai iced tea. If you've never had Thai iced tea in Thailand, then you don't know how good it can be. Basically it tastes just exactly like Thai iced tea in the US, but it's better when it is 100-something degrees out, and costs only 60 cents. The secret ingredient seems to be Carnation evaporated milk. No wonder it is so good!

By the time we arrived at The Grand Palace (after having been told it was closed, too busy, too hot, or not that cool--by commission sharks) it was almost 3pm, and the sign said it closed at 3:30. So we decided to put it off to the next day. It really was beastly hot. We stopped in the shade for a minute to consult the email Mary's Dad's friend Pat had sent us. He suggested an art gallery across the street associated with the university, and since we figured it would have AC, we ducked inside. It was a free museum and the AC was glorious. The art was also incredible (unfortunately for you guys, no photos allowed), though I'd be lying to say we enjoyed it as much as the AC.

We chose for our next stop the Siam Museum because it was nearby, free, we assumed it would have AC, and it wasn't about to close. Plus, Lonely Planet described it as "fun". The first part of the museum was a little lame, with a certain amount of "this is what archeology means," "this is what 'bronze age’ means," etc, but once we launched into some actual history of the area, it was useful. Much of Thailand's land is actually very new, having been deposited recently by river deltas. As such, Thai history doesn't go back nearly as far as other countries in the area like India and China. Basically, Thailand has always been a trading center between India and China, and has developed the culture, ethnicity, and prosperity you might expect from that. When the Europeans came, it managed to retain its independence, though in large part it accomplished this by quickly Westernizing. The king of the time seems to have been a very wise man, who succeeded in showing Europe that Thailand was plenty civilized already, thank you, by adopting a lot of Western culture in a hurry to show the Europeans what they wanted to see. Additionally, the capital was very nicely defensible.

The section on religion was amusing, offering fair short descriptions of animism and Hinduism, and then basically said Buddhism is the most logical explanation of the human condition ever. However, we really liked the artistic columns used to demonstrate Buddhist wisdom. (There were words above.)

From Drop Box

On our way home, we passed through a beautiful park full of Thai people. There were a couple jazzercise groups, some yoga, some sports, and joggers. Now here's a sign of an affluent people--exercise for fun. My photos of people doing stuff didn't come out as it was too dark, but here's one of the cool flowers from along the fountain.

From Drop Box