Bangkok Temples

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.

I just stumbled across this funny news from ABC news. A German tourist once stole a little piece from the Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and brought it back home to Germany. Ever since he had bad luck until he finally sent the piece of the temple, which was  a glass tile, back to the tourism authority of Thailand – along with a letter of apology and he also wrote that he’d send money to donate to the temple in hope that he could thus get rid of his bad luck.

Please take off your shoes before entering the inside of a Thai temple.

It is considered very rude and disrespectful if you enter the inside of a temple with your shoes on.

That’s why before entering you should just leave them on the stairs.

You can see in the picture how the shoes are just left behind when entering the temple.

Sometimes there is also a shelf in front of the temple where you can put your shoes.

People pray on the ground in these temples and since it is a place of prayer and reverence for people it should be respected.

Wrathful Guardians at the gate of Wat SriboonReung, a Buddhist temple in Bangkok near the Mall Bangkapi at the final northern station of the small Bangkok river taxi.
These guards are supposed to keep out all evil – demons and ghosts, which are representations of destructive human emotions like anger, hate, intense desire, fear and others.
What’s typical for Thai temples is that they are stuffed as you can see if you look behind the guardians. There’s a bottle of washing detergent and then behind is there some other stuff stored below a buddhist donation shrine – it’s not an extremely tidy place, but it’s an alive place, a place that is frequented every day by hundreds of people. It’s really an integral part of everyday life.

Dat baht pra bradsham wan gued. (Make merit according to your day of birth).

For each day of the week there is one buddhist statue (plus one extra for general buddhism).

Thai people belief that it matters on what day of the week you are born – it’s kind of like with star signs in our culture, and every Thai person knows what weekday they were born on. This is just one example of how deeply rooted astrology is in Thai peoples minds.

The buddhist Thai week starts on sunday, so in the picture the first buddhist statue from the left is sunday, then monday, etc. In front of each buddhist statue there is a donation bowl and every person should make a donation according to the weekday they were born on.

Thai people belief that this brings good luck (‘chockdee’).

You can donate any amount of money – whether it is 25 satang (a quarter Thai baht) or 100 baht.