Wat Pho (pronounced 'Wat Po', I think) is hands down my favourite temple that I've seen in Bangkok, and considering the amount of time that I've been here (which is not long at all) I have seen a surprising amount. Which clearly makes me an instant pro at these things. Not.
Striking an Anna pose ;)
Either way, if you don't feel like seeing an overload of temples, I would say that you HAVE to put Wat Po at the top of your list of sights to see in Bangkok.
The grounds themselves are breathtaking, with buildings decked-out in beautiful carving, bright colours and gold. There are also huge stupas, which are impossible to capture in one picture. The detailing and painting on them are so intricate and wonderful.
Wat Po has the most images of Buddha in one place in all of Thailand. They are all over the place, and mostly painted gold or they have been covered in gold squares.
There are other statues on the grounds, and a bunch of different doorways. We made it our personal challenge to take a picture at almost every single one we passed by, they were so cool!
The pièce de resistance, however, was the reclining Buddha. I'm pretty sure it's the biggest Buddha statue inside a temple in Thailand, but I could be very wrong. Either way, it is nearly impossible to capture the whole thing in one picture.
Just look at that face! So large, and so serene.
There are also columns along the length of it, which makes it even more challenging to take it the full statue at once.
We went around snapping pictures like mad men, along with the rest of the gaggle of tourists, of the Buddha itself, the gorgeous paintings along the walls and ceiling, and the metal pots at the back side of the Buddha where people would pick up coins and drop them one by one back into the pots to make a fresh clinking sound.
The feet were covered in mother of pearl designs, which I didn't expect.
We left the temple and sat down, decked out in our green robes since we showed up wearing tank tops and shorts.
We decided that we were so focused on taking pictures, that we didn't truly feel like we had truly experienced the magnitude of the statue. We decided to do another tour of it sans camera, and I'm so glad that we did! It has such a calming presence. So wonderful.
The temple was closing, so we took off in search of China Town since we heard that it opens after 6pm, kind of like a night market.
Turns out we had it confused: China Town closes at around 6pm, so all the stores were boarded up. Le lame sauce.
We ended up passing by another cool market along the way, though, where we tried some new fruits - we have some new faves but have no idea what their names are haha. There were also a bunch of flower stalls, we think they were for the Buddhist festival this weekend.
It was getting dark, so I haggled a tuktuk down to 60 baht for a ride back to Khoasan Road to get our bags, get some street food and set up shop with a couple of Changs before heading to the airport.
Piles of yellow flowers
Mystery flower
We ended up meeting some people who invited us to a roof bar, where we had our first Thai bucket experience.
And so began my travel day from hell...but good thing is that I made it to the southern beaches ;)
Hope you all have a great day and I'll be back with my recap of the full moon party! Spoiler alert: I survived!!
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