Bangkok Temples

There’s a temple not far from Samsen Road in the Kao San Area. Inside, you can find two wax figures that look pretty realistic. (Makes Madame Tousseauds look boring). One is the founder of the temple, who died about ten years ago. His name is Pra-Sri-Ar-Ri-Ya-Mu-Nee. The other one is Luang Poo Waen, he was a popular monk in Thailand and the people believe he was a very good monk.

It happens that people walk in there and think that these are real, living monks

This is just hilarious – but surprisingly beautiful.

Monks in Thailand built a temple from empty beer bottles. And yes, I’m talking a real temple, where people go to pray and meditate.

You can see pictures of the probably only temple made out of beer bottles in the world at Treehugger!

Just recently I found Stephen Cysewski’s photographs on the web and contacted him. He seems to be a really nice chap and was kind enough to give permission to publish some of his pictures here.

I just want to share some of them here:

(I have no idea what’s in there, but it surely looks interesting! Who came up with this idea? This is in Wat Klong Toey Nok).

This is also an interesting picture – depicting a scene from the Buddha’s life that is not so often illustrated as vividly as here (in fear of distracting the monks from their meditations).

As you can see, Buddhism too has it’s lower realms that you don’t want to get into…

This is from a temple in Supan Buri

In Chaochengsao.

Buddhist monks during a ceremony.

All pictures (C) by Stephen Cysewski, www.WanderingInThailand.com – you can see more of his pictures there.

In my opinion, many of his most beautiful photographs are from everyday life in Thailand, but since this blog is about Bangkok’s temples I didn’t want to post them here. However, if you do appreciate beautiful photography, I recommend you visit his website.

Here you can see a Thai temple that is in construction in Thailand.

They’re covering up all around the sites here, this is a pretty “high-class” temple and they have lots of funding from wealthy Thai-Chinese donors.

Here’s another temple in Bangkok where you can see construction going on:

And in the next picture you can see a picture of a temple in construction from the inside:

In these pictures you can see young Thai buddhist monks ringing bells in the Golden Mountain temple in Bangkok.

They are wearing the typical orange robes and are walking all upstairs the Golden Mountain temple.

If you haven’t been there, make sure you get to see it. It’s a really great temple and it’s actually refreshing to be up there.

While this monk is actually just made out of wax (I found it on the Jatujak weekend market), it’s not uncommon to find smoking monks in Thailand.

Even though strict monks won’t smoke, there are some monks who don’t take the rules that serious. “Mai pen rai” as they say in Thailand.

When you see pictures of the Wat Pho temple in Bangkok most of the time it’s the Golden Buddha or the majestic temple walls.

But if you look around a bit more, you’ll also find things like this – catching dust in an abandoned corner.

There was actually a group of Thai teenagers listening to American ganster rap and smoking in a secluded area inside the temple compound, but right next to the Golden Buddha.

I find it funny to see that just 10 meters from an area were tourists are almost constantly rubbing ellbows on each other because it’s so overcrowded, and then you walk a couple of steps and you find an area were nobody goes and a group of “outlaws” occupies the space inside a temple compound. The monks don’t seem to care, and the tourists don’t seem to notice.

Surat Osathanugrah, a Thai businesman, politician and recently photographer who’s net worth has been estimated by the Forbes magazine to be $180.000.000,00 died of blood infection at the age of 78.

His funeral will be held at the That Thong Temple’s Chao Chom Pavilion on May 9th.

Surat Osathanugrah was president of the Royal Photographic Society of Thailand and his photographes became widely known with the “Vanishing Bangkok” exhibition where he featured different Bangkok lifestyles and the rapidly dimishing group of people who live along Bangkoks “klongs” (canals).
Vanishing Bangkok was also made into a beautiful photobook.

He also published two other photographic books titled Luang Phrabang and Goodbye Bangkok.

Mr. Osathanugrah already had a good start with his family business that he inherited from his parents. Back in the 20th century his parents ran a pharmacy and supplied the Thai army with a traditional medicine – they then recieved a title from the king of Thailand. Fast forward till the 1980s and Mr. Surat Osathanugrah who’s running the business in the third generation oversees the M150 energy drink, which will become one of the companies most successfull products. His children follow in his artistic footsteps and both sons and grandsons are involved in the music industry.

Bangkok Post just posted a cool article about the Wat Pho being included in the regional Memory of the World (MOW) by the Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).

Khun Preeda (Preeda Tangtrongchitr), 70 years old, who runs the massage school at the Wat Pho temple, was very happy about this development as it secured traditional Thai wisdom from greedy businesses. (There was a case a couple of years ago where a Japanese company tried to trademark the term Rusie Dutton).

A sema is a stone that marks the boundary of a sacred ground of a temple. There are a total of eight semas that surround the Bot. Women are not allowed to enter the area that is marked by the semas – however, they often do and nobody cares.
Sema stones are usually leaf-shaped. The sema stone that you can see in the photos also depicts the dhamma wheel, an important buddhist symbol.