Wat Pho, the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew

Ko, her friend and neighbor Phi Nok, and I got up early Saturday morning and went to Wat Pho, the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. The grandeur of these places left me pretty much speechless. It was a scorching hot day so covering myself with a sarong to enter the temples with torturous but nevertheless I marched on, determined to see everything.

Wat Pho (Wat means temple) has this amazing reclining Buddha. It is forty-six metres long and fifteen metres high and besides being gold plated it's eyes and the soles of its feet (the toe prints) are lined with mother of pearl. While I was admiring the Buddha I was hearing what I thought was a recording of bells, but turned out to be the sound of people throwing coins into a row, as long as the Buddha, of monks' bowls. Of course I had to participate, so I bought my little pail of coins and off I went dropping them into the bowls. I think I missed one when I stopped to have my photo taken and I had extra coins when I reached the end of the line so the last few bowls got a few extra.

One of the most memorable things for me this day was participating in my first Buddhist ritual. Ko & Nok were very nice to lead me through it. First we established that "my" Buddha (based on the day I was born - Wednesday) was the reclining Buddha (funny I thought that I would get the only one lying down as if to mock my laziness). Next I bought an unblossomed Lotus flower, incense, a little candle and three pieces of gold leaf paper (inside folded pieces of paper) sold as a set. I saw people pressing the paper on their Buddha, so not yet aware that inside the paper was the gold leaf, I pressed the paper itself against the Buddha thinking that I was supposed to leave with some gold from the Buddha on my paper, until Ko came over to help me. I laugh about that still. Next I lit my little candle and mounted it with the others. Then I lit my incense (3 sticks) and held them with the lotus flower in between prayer hands and kneeling before the Buddhas asked for what I wanted to myself. Then I put my incense with the rest in a vase that is filled with sand, and the lotus flower with the others in a vase that is filled with water, and made my exit.

After, for fun, we shook the Chinese sticks. Eventually one pops up and you read your fortune based on the number on the stick. I didn't really like my first fortune and Ko said that you don't have to keep it if you don't like it, so I shook again. Both fortunes revealed somewhat of a difficult life but I liked the second one better.

After spending the morning and a good part of the afternoon absorbing beautiful Temple/Palace architecture we escaped to a big air-conditioned mall, and I had Burger King for dinner.