More Bangkok

Our hotel is next to Chinatown, so we walked through the primary market street. Some of the more interesting items for sale were bird's nests (made from the bird's saliva), fish stomachs which had a wide variety of prices (based on the type of fish) and soy products shaped to look like shrimp and chicken. Chinatown is one of the most expensive places to live in Bangkok, an apartment with ground floor retail space goes for $1M.

Reclining Buddha at Wat Po

We then went to Wat Su That temple with its large bronze Buddha from the 13th century, though the temple was build in the 18th century. After that we went to the Wat Po temple with its 150 foot long reclining Buddha. Both temples had large collections of smaller Buddhas. Wat Po has 4 large stuppas for 4 kings as well as many smaller ones, decorated with broken china shipped as ballast from China. The primary Buddha in this temple isn't the reclining Buddha, but the Golden Buddha containing the ashes of King Rama I.







We also learned about Buddhism as a more moderate form of Hinduism. Hindus have their classes and people reincarnate into the same class. In Buddhism, your reincarnation is based on the deeds of your previous life. Most of the countries have their own branches of Buddhism. Buddha himself lived in the 6th century BC and had reincarnated 108 times. (Too learn more about Buddhism, see October 10th entries when we went to the Buddhist University.)

In the afternoon, we visited the home of Jim Thompson, an American, who revitalized the Thia silk market after World War II. His home was built in traditional Thai fashion and is filled with paintings and sculptures.

Three puppeteers

In the evening we attended a traditional Thai puppet show - the principle puppets are operated by 3 people controlling a hand and back, 2 feet, and then the last hand. As they performed, the puppeteers showed the same emotions as the puppet. The story was the now familiar Hindu legend of the Churning of the Sea of Milk, though I never would have guessed without reading the narration. What was more interesting was the interaction with the audience afterwards, playing with a child and kissing the girls, it was amazing how 3 people could act as one during this improvisation.