The Grand Tour!

My friend, who has been visiting BKK, went to see the Grand Palace, where the Royal family resides and so does the Emerald Buddha. This reminded me of my own trip there, my first weekend in BKK. My couple friends and I woke up early morning even on a Saturday because we wanted to avoid the scorching noon sun and heat of BKK city. We started our journey with a map that was gifted to us by a friend who has been living here for over a year. I took in charge of the map as I had taken some expedition training during high school in the UK, not that one needed such training for simple map readings. On our way, we passed Khaosang Road, a tourist hub in BKK, a monument with a pillar, on top of which were three Lord Ganesha heads attached to each other and a long garden like structure with elephants carved out of the plants. It was strange to know that Thai people prayed to Lord Ganesha as the money god because we Hindus pray him as the god of good luck.

We also passed by a shrine called City Pillar Shrine. We all went inside and were definitely taken aback by the spiritual aura inside the shrine. What was more interesting to me was the fact that many of the Buddha statues were in the form of Hindu God images, for example, one of the Buddha idols was holding flute, which is the symbol of Lord Krishna, the other was holding a book in his hand, which is the symbol of Lord Brahma. Knowing how interrelated Buddhism and Hinduism are, this was yet another eye opening realization of how all religions are the same in essence.

After being spiritually nutritioned, we moved on to the Royal Palace and the first amusing thing I saw was a poster with prohibited clothing such as sleeveless shirts, shorts, quarter length pants, tight pants, transparent clothes, short skirts, and so on. Having come from a conservative Hindu family, this made perfect sense for me. Any Hindu person in the right sense of their mind would not wear majority of those clothes while visiting temples. Since we were all properly dressed, we went ahead and bought tickets to get inside. I was almost tempted to hire a tour guide but was thankful to not have done it since there were free guides available inside the palace.

We first had the opportunity to see big demon like idols that were derived from Hindu epics and were placed for the protection of the Emerald Buddha. Then we were taken to see three different styled buildings, all of which were gold plated. The temple for the Emerald Buddha was placed at the center of the square and we were not allowed to take photos of him. The Buddha was dressed in his summer attire. Apparently, he has three kinds of clothes, 2^nd one for winter and a 3^rd one for rainy season, all of which are made from pure gold.

Then after, we went to see the palace itself and visited the royal museum. Knowing that Bangkok is the gold city, it was not surprising to see that majority things in the museum were made from gold, for example, the royal attire, their cups and plates, beetle leaf holder, gold woven handkerchief, sword holder, and many other things. It was truly like the movies, where you saw lots of golden, rubies and diamonds. I must say my visit to the Grand Palace almost tempted me to get some gold jewelry for myself. But then I am not really a yellow gold fan, I like white gold and silver more. Hence, my temptation did not last a second.