Bangkok Temple Tours

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.

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.

Typical multicolored glass-mirror decoration of a Thai temple in Bangkok.

Colorful glass mirrors are used in a mosaic fashion to decorate the walls of Bangkok temples. This is very unique to Buddhistic temples in Thailand, specially in Bangkok and is in sharp contrast to Japanese zen-temples who are very basic and plain.

In the detailed close up shot of one of the green circles which represent the inside of a flower you can see how much nitty-gritty work is being invested in the decoration. You can see an opposing wall with a motorcycle leaned on it being reflected in the mirror tiles. (You can click on the image to enlarge it).
It took 26 specially shaped pieces of green mirror just to create this – all being put into the wall by hand. If you look at the bigger picture of the wall you can see the green circle in the lower quarter of the screen – compare that to the upper half and think about how much effort and time was being put into decoration this temple – since this is just a tiny part of a big temple, which is again just part of a bigger temple complex.

This is also one reason why when you go to rural areas in Thailand many temples will be a lot simpler and not as fancy – because it just takes large amounts of money to built such a temple. But in Bangkok temples are doing pretty well in general and have multiple income streams – based on people making donations, services that the monks provide to the people and sales of amulets and other spiritual items that are believed to protect against evil and bring good luck.

In this picture you can see a sign that invites everybody to make a donation by buying on of these buckets filled with usefull everyday items for monks. From the profit of the sales scholarships for Buddhist students are paid, and also electricity bills for the temple.
The buckets contain things such as plastic bowls to take a batch, cottonpads, ginger drinks, candles, incense sticks, water, washing detergent, noodles, tea, toothbrushes, small towels, a monks robe, toothpaste, matches, a sponge, paracetamol and toilet paper
The value of the bucket is written to be 275 baht – which equals about 6 Euro or 10 dollar. You should at least donate 100 baht or any other amount that you find appropriate.

Donation box. In front of the donation box there is a stack of envelopes, a piece of paper and a pen. Before people make merit they write the name of the deceased person they want to make merit for on an envelope, put the money in an envelope and put it in the donation box.