Wat Pho; Wat Phra Kaew & Grand Palace

After my late, slow, and underwhelming start to Bangkok yesterday, I set out to see the Bangkok I imagined it to be based on pictures I’ve seen. That included visiting Wat Pho and the Wat Phra Kaew and Grand Palace complex.

Bangkok is a sprawling city. Getting to Wat Pho involved taking public transit. Transit is somewhat confusing here.

There are two rapid transit systems. One (the BTS) runs on raised rails. The other (the MRT) runs underground. The two are run by different companies and don’t have common ticketing. If you want to transfer between the two you need a separate ticket/pass for each.

My guidebook recommends that if you take the BTS you should buy and use the BTS’s stored value card. However, my guidebook also states that you can purchase single tickets.

I referenced my guidebook because there’s an MRT station about a fifteen-minute walk from my hotel. I don’t think there’s a close BTS station. In any case, it’s the MRT that Google Maps told me to take to Wat Pho. So I have no experience with the BTS.

I’d read that on the MRT you can, like I did in Singapore, just tap in and tap out with a credit card. I tried tapping with my credit card. The fare gate told me, “Invalid card.”

I went to the ticket window. The person there spoke little English. But another prospective passenger came to my rescue and translated for me. I learned that the fare gates don’t take foreign credit cards, just local ones. The ticket seller couldn’t sell me a pass, only a single-ride token. The MRT charges by distance. So you have to buy a token for whatever station you’re going to. The value you purchase is loaded electronically onto the token.

You tap the token at the fare gate when you go in, then drop it into a slot in the fare gate when you leave.

Oh, about the not-accepting-my-credit card thing. Credit cards aren’t big here. Cabs take only cash. All of the sights I took in today had a fee associated with them and they took only cash. Small restaurants don’t take credit cards. (But more expensive ones do.) River ferries take only cash. (However, I booked a short cruise for tomorrow through Viator and, because I paid through the app, I was able to pay by card.)

Before I left on this trip I bought some currency for all of the three countries I’m visiting. I didn’t get much, just the equivalent of about $100 – $150 Canadian, depending on the conversion rate and the restriction of only being able to get bills. In my past few trips, I’ve come back with all or almost all of the currency I bought because everywhere preferred, and sometimes only took credit cards. So I thought that would be enough.

I left Singapore with most of the Singapore dollars I came with. Even though I didn’t yet know about the low acceptance rate for credit cards here in Bangkok, I still exchanged my leftover Singapore dollars for Thai baht. I figure it’ll be easier to have one currency when I exchange it back into Canadian dollars when I return home.

I’m glad I got the extra Thai baht from my Singapore dollars. It won’t be enough. I’ll be hitting an ATM at least once before I leave Thailand.

Wat Pho

Upon reading that I went to Wat Pho some readers no doubt expected me to say something like “Wat Pho? What for?” Or possibly, “Wat Pho? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m in Thailand. Pho is a Vietnamese soup, not Thai.”

Despite being known for the occasional bad pun, I’m not going to go that route today. No way. Sorry.

You’re going to see the word “wat” come up a few times in both of today’s posts, morning and afternoon. And quite possibly in some other posts from Bangkok and maybe my next destination.

“Wat” is the English transliteration of the Thai word for “temple.” I visited four temples today. My guidebook and walking tour app said that you have to wear long pants in temples. It’s muggy and very much weather for shorts, so I decided to cluster some temples into one day. Although, that might be pointless as temples—a lot of them—are the main attractions in Bangkok.

“Temple” probably gives the wrong impression of Wat Pho. It’s more of a temple compound. There are several attractive towers, called chedi (stupa) of various heights, from maybe three times my height (or even a little less) to a few times my height. They’re all, tall and short, decorated with coloured tiles and/or ceramics. None of them are climbable, at least not if you want to stay on the good side of the keepers of the wat.

Wat Pho includes a few shrine buildings with large Buddha figures, either sitting or standing. The most ornately decorated of the shrine interiors, the front of which is festooned with flowers and other decorations, and the walls beautifully tiled, is the main ordination hall.

The compound also houses massage pavilions where the ancient art of Thai massage is taught to people who will become practitioners. And they offer Thai massage sessions to the public. I didn’t investigate further because I read that Thai massage can be quite painful and because I’m uncertain about Thai massage protocols. I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself.

There’s also a small museum that among other things, provides models showing the alleged ten lines of energy addressed by Thai massages.

The grounds are quite attractive, with tastefully placed grass, trees and sculptures.

But none of that is what Wat Pho is most famous for. Its star attraction is its huge, gold-coloured reclining Buddha housed in a long building. He isn’t so much reclining as lying flat on his side. And he is huge, several times life-size.

What a stupid thing to say. I have no idea how big Buddha was. For all I know he was a true giant among religious figures. But if the reclining Buddha statue is life-size and anyone ever makes a film called “Buddha meets Godzilla,” Godzilla’s a goner. For sure. Unless, that is, Godzilla reminds Buddha of his peaceful, serene nature.

Wat Phra Kaew & Grand Palace

Wat Phra Kaew is in the compound of the Grand Palace. Or maybe the Grand Palace is in the compound of Wat Phra Kaew. Or maybe they’re separate but side-by-side. I’m not sure. The point is that there is a single admission price for both and an easy, open connection between them.

Wat Pho was a wow attraction, but so is Wat Phra Kaew. The best part of it, for me, was a series of murals that wrap around the interior side of much of the wall that surrounds most of the Wat Phra Kaew compound. My guidebook tells me that the 178 murals there depict the entire Ramakian, a national epic poem of Thailand. (My guidebook spells it Ramakian, Wikipedia spells it Ramakien. Your guess is as good as mine as to which is correct. Because it’s a transliteration, it probably doesn’t matter.)

While the murals might have been my favourite item, I don’t think that’s what gets top billing. That honour goes to the Emerald Buddha. I went into the shrine that contains it and didn’t see it. There are lots of other statues and bright decorations in there, but I didn’t see the Emerald Buddha.

Outside, I looked at my guidebook again. It told me that a lot of people miss it because of all of the distractions, and because it’s up high and small, just 66 centimetres tall (a little over two feet). After reminding myself of that (I’d read the guidebook entry earlier and forgot what it said), I went back in and spotted the Emerald Buddha.

They strictly forbid photography in the shrine that contains the Emerald Buddha. So don’t bother looking for a particularly good picture of it here. However, they do let you take a picture through the door from outside. And, surprisingly, the Emerald Buddha is much easier to spot from there because the doorframe filters out a lot of the distractions. That picture is below.

The Grand Palace is a large, stately white and off-white building along with some smaller, more colourful and stylish outbuildings. My guidebook said that tourists can walk around the grounds and go into one of the outbuildings, but not the main building. I walked around the grounds but couldn’t find any buildings I could visit. They all had “no entry” signs in front of them.

So, done for the morning, I left and found a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where I had a nice Thai chicken curry for lunch.

Oh, by the way. Wat Phra Kaew enforced the “no shorts” rule. Wat Pho didn’t. Now you know.