Day Eight: 21 February

Today was the February full moon, the festival of Maha Puja in Thailand, which commemorates the day that, completely on the spur of the moment, 1250 or so disciples of the Buddha came to hear him preach. Traditionally, Thai Buddhists go to the temple and light candles to make merit today. Because the full moon it is also one of the dates when Chinese people go to the temple, we decided it would be a good day check out as many temples as possible. We focused on Chinatown, and weren't disappointed.

We caught a boat to Tha Ratchavongse pier (no. 5), walked down Th. Ratchawong and turned left on Th. Anuwong. A few yards along we turned right down the little Soi Krai. It wanders around, but if you keep going further you come to Wat Ga Buang Kim, a little neighbourhood Chinese temple decorated on the outside with scenes from Chinese Opera, and with an opera stage opposite. Worshippers were burning paper money for their ancestors and leaving offerings, with locals of all ages coming and going, mostly on motor scooters, as you can see.

Returning to Th. Anuwong we continued, turning right on the soi leading to Wat Chakkrawat, which is a Thai temple. The locals there were preparing for Maha Puja, setting out bundles of candles and incense, and we were enthusiastically shown around the Bot by a lady from their equivalent of the Temple's altar guild, who couldn't have been more hospitable. She showed us every single little detail of the Bot and its wall paintings.

The Wat also has a crocodile pond. The first crocodile was fished out of the river and given its own pool in the temple to stop it eating local swimmers, and its descendents have become a feature of the place.

This strikes me as the biggest difference I have encountered between Thai culture and where I come from. I can't imagine trapping a man-eating bear or a rattlesnake or whatever and then giving it and its descendents for all eternity a special enclosure and free food at the First Presbyterian Church. Even Quakers wouldn't come up with that idea. However, I can recall my son Bobby telling me when he was around seven years old that if we could find a snake-handling church that he would be happy to go every Sunday, so I suppose it is possible that the crocodiles are a ploy to get little boys to go to the temple.

By the way, there is also shabby grotto at the back of Wat Chakkrawatthat has Buddha’s real shadow painted on it and a statue of a fat man who is said to have been so handsome that he had to gorge himself in order to get away from his female admirers. Yeah, right.

We then headed deeper into Chinatown, returning to Th. Anuwong and turning left up Th. Mahachak, crossing over the crazy crowded Sampeng Lane which used to be famous for opium dens but which is now famous for cheap shoes, then crossing over Th. Yaowarat and then turning right on Th. Charoen Krung until we came to the big tiered gateway to Wat Mangon Kamalawat (the ‘Dragon Flower Temple’). This important Mahayana Buddist temple is a completely different experience to the typical Thai Wat, always busy, but especially crowded today with worshippers coming to remember their ancestors by leaving offerings of oranges and paper money. The air is thick with incense and once through the second courtyard and inside the temple through a gateway with ceramic dragons overhead, it is hard to breathe but mesmerizing with monks and worshippers and larger than life statues of bearded wise men looking down on the confusion below.

Leaving the temple through the smaller exit on the western side, we returned to Th. Charoen Krung, walking westwards and then turning right on Th. Ratchawon until we turned left into Th. Yaowarat. On the opposite side of the street just a few doors down is the Shangri La restaurant, with cakes for sale outside, and a few tables downstairs, and bigger family seating (including private rooms) upstairs. We had fantastic dim sum there and a chance to recover from Chinatown madness. Laurie was really happy to find a good dim sum restaurant because in the Dreamer family, instead of going to a temple, you make merit by eating dim sum.

Leaving Shangri-La, we continued down Th. Yaowarat, and turned right down Soi Itsaranuphap, which is filled with food hawkers and shops selling dried shrimps and other delicacies. There is a market, Kao Talat, to explore here, and, on the corner of Soi Wanit 1, the little Chao Kuan Oo Taoist sanctuary. You need to do this, if you are here in Bangkok on a full moon day. Outside the entrance, line up and buy a plate of turnip greens (at least they look like turnip greens), and a bundle of incense. Take off your shoes and squeeze your way into the temple. On the right you will see the life-sized golden statue of a smiling horse and a monk who accepts your plate of turnip greens on his behalf and rings the bell around the horse's neck too signify his pleasure. I didn't get a picture of this but I swear it is true: it's the Mr Ed Temple.

We then continued down the Soi and turned left down Sampeng Lane. At the end of the street we walked a few metres down Th. Songwat, turned left up Th. Trimit, and crossed over the big intersection with the Chinese arch, and along Th. Traimit to the entrance to the Wat Traimit, where Maha Puja celebrations were in progress. No sign of people walking around the temple, but they were placing candles before small Buddhas placed in front of the temple under a tent.

This is the golden Buddha temple, known for its solid gold 13^th century Buddha, at 10 feet tall the largest of its kind in the world. When it was brought to Bangkok by Rama III it was encased in stucco and no one knew what lay underneath until in 1955 it was knocked by accident revealing the gold statue underneath. A lot of plaster Buddhas were destroyed in the national scramble to find other golden Buddhas after this astonishing event! Inside the temple, we sat and watched as visitors came to receive a blessing and a friendship bracelet from the monk inside.

Leaving the temple, we continued walking down Th. Traimit, past the Hua Lamphong train station to the MRT station at Hua Lamphong. We went straight from there two stops to Silom, for a well deserved foot massage at Ruen-Nuad! We took a taxi back to the flat and ate out at D-River (Dairy Queen) again, at a table on the river – a lot of spicy dishes this time including a Balsam Apple salad, that was actually bitter melon and shrimp, an eggplant salad, a green chicken curry with roti, a red curry with prawns and pad thai noodles.