Bangkok Temple Tours

Buddhist Wood carving at Wat Traimit

This is a fine example of the artistic craftsmanship involved in Thai woodcarving.

Another odd discovery at Wat Samphanthawongsaram Worawiharn: a hidden Buddhist graffiti. The buddha is sketched on the ballustrade of a temple.

Next time I visit the temple, I’ll try to find that part again – maybe the sketch has by now been turned into a mural.

Buddhist graffiti sketch?

Also, I wonder – if this is an “illegal” graffiti – would the monks actually wipe it out? After all, it still displays the Buddha. But then, as far as I can recall, it’s quiet uncommon to see depictions of the Buddha that are nearly the ground, basically under the waistline of a person standing nearly, like in this case. And oftentimes, Thai people make a great effort of not being higher than a Buddha image – e.g. by lowering themselves.

Maybe I just got too much time on my hand to wonder about this kind of stuff, haha…

Small window-doors at Wat Traimit in Bangkok’s Chinatown – this is the temple where the golden Buddha is located. Apart from the two figures, who I suppose are guards (watch the truncheons they’re holding), also notice the flowery background which is done in typical fractal-style for Thai arts.

Windows of Wat Traimit in Chinatown, Bangkok

Last year I walked around the Wat Samphanthawongsaram Worawiharn and there was some construction work going on. For example, they where making some decorative elements for the temple, and you can see them in their raw state in this picture:

Elements for Temple Decoration being made

You can see how much precision and detailwork goes into these temples. And while I enjoy looking at the finished work, discovering these little pieces of Buddhist work in progress was even more delightful.

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.