Wat Phra Kaew

Bangkok is full of Wats, or Buddhist temples. The whole country is heavily Buddhist, and there are about three hundred temples in the city. These usually consist of some sort of Buddha image, plus a building to house it.

Wat Phra Kaew is the biggest wat in Bangkok. It houses the Emerald Buddha. This is not a terribly large image, but is made entirely of Jade. Nobody seems to know when or where it was manufactured, but at some point, it was covered in plaster (no doubt to hide it from an invading enemy). It’s called the Emerald Buddha because the abbot of the monastery where it was housed noticed the plaster flaking of the nose, saw the green color, and decided the treasure was made of emerald. On notifying the King, the image was transferred to a much more important wat in the then capital, Ayutthaya. This capital was attacked many times in the last 500 years, and when it finally fell (either to Khmer attackers or Burmese attackers, I can’t remember), they trundled off the Emerald Buddha to their own capital (and melted down the gold covering all the much larger images in the capital). When the Thais regrouped from their new capital of Bangkok, many years later, and conquered this other Kingdom, they took the image back, and built a new wat in Bangkok to house it. This is the Wat Phra Kaew.

The entire complex has much more to offer than the Emerald Buddha, though. It’s contained in a much larger complex which also houses the Royal Grand Palace, where the King lives at least part of the time, and several other exhibits. Outside the complex there is the usual assortment of hawkers and con artists, but once you make your way through them, and an assortment of people who want to be your tour guide just inside, you’re fine, and everyone leaves you alone. One story we heard a lot is that we needed to buy a ticket (this actually happens deep inside the complex), and that we weren’t properly dressed – you have to have your legs covered, and your shoulders covered. Short sleeve shirts and sandals are okay, but shorts and tank tops are not. But, they’ve thought of this, and know that tourists wear shorts, so they have a whole collection of clothes to loan you once you get inside. They’re happy to take a 100b note as collateral, and you get it back afterwards. So, I got some long pants, we paid something like 300b each for the ticket, and we were in.

The only touts inside are people trying to sell themselves as tour guides. This might actually have come in handy (and unlike most tourist predators, they all spoke moderately good English, and seemed pretty nice), but we ignored them. Immediately inside the wat, and along the entire outer wall, is a giant mural the depicts various scenes from, I presume, Buddhist mythology. There are all kinds of really detailed battles between people and these demon-dog type things, who were usually green. Sometimes the battles were between two groups of demon dogs, some green, some other colors. Occasionally these guys were flying through the air, and people we throwing spears or arrows up at them, and occasionally, there was some sort of giant monster or demon, who was many times the size of the others. Here’s where the tour guide might have been useful. This went on and on, for the entire inner wall of the wat. I would guess it was half a kilometer in length, and was pretty intricately detailed the entire way. It wasn’t all battles, sometimes there were just ordinary looking court scenes in castles or wats. And sometimes ordinary court scenes, where a battle was just breaking out!

The mural was in places in ill repair, and there were craftsmen and women busy touching up scenes with gold paint. There were also a few who were tracing the murals onto paper.

The rest of the grounds of the complex held a few other smaller wats, and the palace, which we only got to see one end of.

In all, it was a much nicer experience than our first day in Bangkok. We took cabs instead of trying to walk, and we found a sanctuary from the stink of traffic. Afterwards, we weren’t far from the district with vegetarian restaurants, so we tried another one out. This one was called the Corner Café, and it was pretty hippy-backpacker-ish. I had a headache, so probably didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. It may deserve another trial.