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| Wat Poh is most famous for the Reclining Buddha which is about 120 feet long. Above on the left is a side view of that statue. If you there are pillars behind the statue to support the roof and other pillars in front. But that makes it really hard to get any pictures that get all of him. However, that 120 feet is like ten stories of a building and quite long. As you can see the Reclining Buddha is plaster covered with gold leaf, but is not in such good repair. They are trying to collect money to restore him. The have replaced the plaster that was washed away from the leaky roof (now fixed), but haven't yet replaced the gold leaf. His face was quite impressive with such a wonderful expression (shown above on the right) and his feet were decoreated with mother of pearl showing the whorl. By tradition there are 120 aspects or signs by which the Buddha can be recognized and there were 120 Chinese characters in the whorls to indicate each of the aspects. That was the last of our visit to Wat Poh. Next we visited the Royal / National Palace. This is the entrance gate. |
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| There was only one entrance ot the Royal Palace as far as we could tell and it was along a sort of narrow alley way between some tall buildings. To the left of the entrance to the palace (and shown here) is the temple where the king would go to prey. We arrived there at about 12:10PM but were told by the guards that they were closed until 1:30PM. So we went and had lunch and came back. Then we visited the palace and the temple. The Royal Palace was very heavily guarded with a guard at each building and many places that we weren't permitted to go. Not speaking the language we would just smile whenever approached and so often we would just walk wherever interested us and many times a guard would run up and shake his head. We would smile and sort of bow and then go back and then a different direction. I assume that we got away with quite a lot just because we would smile and nod apologetically and people would not bother trying to explain what was required. There were some quite impressive buildings and this is one. |
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| We were allowed into many of the buildings and they would have impressive contents. One building had the Kings platform which would be like the wooden platforms that Korean families would use during the summer for life in the courtyard, but it would be elaborately decorated with mother of pearl and all the right symbols. I really would of liked to take pictures, but in a large and impressive building there might only be one object in the center of a large room and one the way there would be two signs syaing no pictures allowed and between the signs would be four or so rolls of film run out of their canisters and tied between the signs. It was a very clear message and convinced me to not even try it (smiling and nodding didn't seem enough to get away with pictures and I didn't want ot risk the other pictures I did have. This was one building was in the style of around 1900 and was quite beautiful with back lit glass doors that I liked. Below are a couple of more traditional Thai buildings. The one on right has the common pattern in the glazed ceramic roof tiles. |
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| Above on the left is a bronze statue of Buddha that has been 'dressed' with an orange sash (their images were often dressed). We also really like the She She dogs and above (in the peak of the roof) was a mosaic in colored glass mirrors. On the right there is another view of the same shrine / puja but from the side so that you can see the really detailed layered roofs. There were also some really impressive courtyards. Here in the center of this picture is the entrance or gateway to one such courtyard with really massive ferocious images as had seen elsewhere, but these were about twice the size and in perfect condition with complete mosaic tile decorations. Inside the courtyard there would be all sorts of shrines, bonzai trees, pujas, etc. as shown below. In the garden below on the left there is a miniature building on a hill with different animals at the base. There is a horse on the right and a cow and elephant on the left. |
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This page was last updated on November 16, 2005.
