Travelling Buddha

We had a bit of a sleep in this morning, went to breakfast, then headed out. We walked through Sanam Luang, or Royal Field, a park once used for royal cremations and ceremonies. It is now just a park, but today is a holiday in Thailand: Magha Puja (see previous day's entry for details). There were tons of stalls set up selling Buddhist books, as well as lectures and talks by various monks and other people. It also happens to be election day, presumably for the House of Representatives and the prime minister (Thailand is a constitutional monarchy). It was fun to see all of the locals out enjoying the religious holiday, and there were heaps of school kids flying kites in the park.

We then went to the Grand Palace. The King no longer lives here but uses it for special ceremonies. The Palace is made up of many buildings, temples, chedi (stupas), pillars, and halls. After Kel borrowed a sarong (I had 3/4 length pants on, a no-no for the G.P.), we headed straight to Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. It is a gorgeous building covered in gold foil tiles and colourful mirrored mosaics. Inside there is a Buddha statue made of jasper quartz or nephrite jade. The statue has 3 golden robes, which are changed by the King himself 3 times a year as the weather changes. There is one for the dry season, one for the wet season, and one for the cool season. And this Buddha has been around. It was made some time before the 15th century and is first recorded as being in Chiang Rai, Thailand. It then appeared in Lampang where it stayed for 32 years before being brought to Chiang Mai. In the mid-16th century, the Laotian invaders took it to Luang Prabang, Laos, then shifted it to Vientiane, Laos. 200 years later, Thailand declared war on Laos and the Buddha was taken back to Thonburi, then moved to its home in Bangkok. It is only about 70 centimetres high, but is a beautiful shiny green, sitting high up among heaps of gold stuff. There were many Thais here praying.

We then spent the afternoon wandering among the other buildings within the Grand Palace walls, enjoying the different architecture and elaborately decorated buildings. Starving, we had a very unsuccessful attempt at lunch at a popular place along the river. After waiting for about 10 minutes for a table, then another 10 minutes to order, we finally left as they did not have anything off of the menu we wanted. We managed to find a nice, quiet cafe near our hotel, where Nigel ate his first 'real food' in a few days and Kel didn't end up eating as they stuffed up her order 2 times. She ended up getting a pita sandwich from a street stall (v. good). Nigel took an afternoon nap, and Kel tried to catch up on some emails etc. In the early evening, we caught the ferry to Chinatown. In all, Bangkok's Chinatown sucks and there was nothing happening at night. But we did happen upon a busy temple in time to see many monks and people praying by walking around the temple with candles, incense and flowers (marking the end of the Magha Puja holiday). We tried to find some good Chinese food for dinner, but couldn't find anything worth eating, so we went back to Khao San Road for a good meal. We then treated ourselves to our first traditional Thai massage. Thai massage combines characteristics from massage (kneading muscles), chiropractics (manipulating skeletal parts) and acupressure (applying pressure to specific parts of the body) in an attempt to balance the functions of the four body elements (thaat thang sii). These four body elements are earth (din, solid parts of the body like bones, muscles, ligaments etc), water (nam, blood and fluids), fire (fai, digestion and metabolism), and air (lom, respiration and circulation). It was much needed and we felt fantastic afterwards, exactly what we needed after a long day.