Wat Pho We Having too Much Fun

***all photos copywrited by Nancy Hesse

It’s pretty cool to see something you’ve seen on TV and in movies and in books and never thought you’d see in person.  The Reclining Buddha statue in Bangkok was one of those things for me.

After the wonderful massage, I got to walk to the temple that held this statue.  Good thing I don’t carry my stress in my legs or I would have needed a wheel chair.

Anyway, here are the useless facts.  Wat Pho is named after a monastery in India where Buddha is believed to have lived.  Prior to the temple’s founding, the site was the center of education for traditional Thai medicine (ha!  This is where the sadists come to learn “massage”).  Statues were created showing yoga positions. Under King Rama III plaques inscribed with medical texts were placed around temple.  Adjacent to the building housing the Reclining Buddha is a small raised garden, the centerpiece being a bodhi tree which is propogated from the original tree in India where Buddha sat while awaiting enlightenment. Wat Pho is one of the largest and oldest wats in Bangkok with more than 1000 Buddha images as well as one of the largest Buddha images.  The Reclining Buddha is 160 feet long and one of the largest Buddha statues in the world.  The temple complex is also regarded as the first public university of Thailand teaching religion, science and literature through its murals and sculptures (Thanks Wikipedia!)

You take off your shoes at the entrance to the temple.  You put them in bags.  In most of the temples you take your shoes off and you go back and find them untouched and unmolested.  There you get a bag to carry them with you because you don’t come out in the same place you go in.  Still, I think in America, there’d be some idiot out there stealing shoes.  There is a sign that says “Beware of Pickpockets” though.  First time I saw anything that resembled that kind of warning.  Welcome to the tourist trap, folks.

You know you always have those friends who say you should avoid the normally touristy things and “immerse yourself in the culture.”  But you don’t go to Hawaii and avoid Pearl Harbor.  You don’t go to Yosemite and avoid “Old Faithful.”  And you don’t go to Thailand and avoid the Reclining Buddha. 

Clearly, I was not alone in this opinion.

It was crowded.

But it was worth it.

To say that the Buddha is immense does not do it justice.  The thing is awe inspiring.  The detail is fascinating.  The face of the Buddha is a soft smile as it depicts the calm passing of the Buddha as he tells his followers not to mourn his passing.  There is little talking amid the crowd.  There’s lots of photo snapping.

Nancy is in heaven, snapping away like a turtle on crack.  For the rest of our trip, I’m going to have to look at her photo of this Buddha’s face, positioned between two large roof supporting poles.  Nancy will say “I just love this picture, it’s so perfectly aligned.  I’m definitely going to get this one enlarged.”  She will say this approximately 5.3 million times over the next ten days.

The bottom of the Buddha’s feet tell the story of the Buddha and it’s depicted in mother of pearl.  No picture in the world can do justice to this.  Sorry.  It glows, it reflects a million colors.  It’s amazing.

As we finish taking pictures and gaping in awe, we meet Miki at the end of the building housing the Reclining Buddha and turn in our shoe bags.  We put our shoes back on.  As I do this, I note that my neck kind of hurts.  I wonder what I could have possibly done.

We drive from Wat Pho to a boat on the river.  It’s a big barge like boat that doesn’t move much.  It’s here that we get our traditional Thai food in buffet form.  Apparently this is where all the tour companies bring their charges.

Nancy and I get a seat and while our food is paid for, drinks are not.  Everywhere in Thailand you pay for drinks.  It’s hot.  They know where they have you.  Pay for the drink or drink your own sweat, you stinky foreigner.  Okay, they’re much nicer as a whole than I am—at least they were to my face.

I try a little bit of everything.  Different fruits, different sweets.  They offer Western food on this buffet.  But have I mentioned it’s hot?  So, not wanting spaghetti with marinara.

The highlight is what Miki recommends.  Thai noodle soup.  That’s what she’s having and that’s what all the Thai guides are having.  That’s what I’m having.

It’s a good soup, a broth with rice noodles and veggies.  You can add fish sauce and hot sauce to it however you like.  I like mine hot.  It’s also got mystery meat in it.  Don’t know what it is.  Could be chicken balls, fish balls, who knows.  I can’t get my soup through it to cut it in half and I’m not sucking in a ball in completely without first knowing where it’s been.

I order extra water too.  Hoarding water has become my primal occupation.

Nancy shows me her picture of the Reclining Buddha.  “I just love this picture,” she says.  “It’s so perfectly aligned.  I just love this picture.” 

I nod.

To be fair, it is a good picture and I am very grateful that Nancy was there to take all the photos to free me up to absorb all the details and sights and smells that I could.

Lunch smells like cloves and curry and spice.

The other tourists are pigging out on salad and spaghetti.  None of them are at the noodle soup bar, the guy serving up the broth – you pick the bowl with the noodles and veggies in it, then they add the steaming hot broth to cook them—is standing alone after he finishes serving the guides.

After lunch, I try the desserts.  This is the first place I discover khanom krok, the little sweet coconut pancakes that they serve all over Thailand on the streets and everywhere.  Holy crap, I hate coconut, but I frickin’ love these things.  They’re fried on the outside and creamy pudding stuff in the middle.  I even came home and looked up a recipe for them.  I’m going to make them soon!

Finished with lunch, Miki takes us to the other end of the boat and we step out onto a rickety rotting dock.  

“Time for boat trip,” she tells us.

Across the uneasy river, a narrow longboat starts up, billowing black smoke from its engine as the wiry, hard-looking captain pulls the lawnmower engine to a start.  The motor has a long pole at the other end, and a small propeller at the end.  He maneuvers his boat to the dock.

The top edge of the boat is about an inch wide and about a half foot below the edge of the dock.  There’s nothing to hold on to when jumping down into it except the canvas awning.

“You step down and then you sit down right away,” Miki advises.  “I’ll do it first so you can see.

Uh yeah….what I see is my impending drowning death in a sewage polluted river filled with toxic fish and bobbing discarded condoms and milk cartons.

 (to be continued in next blog.)