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There has been a pagoda on this site for at least 2500 years. The first one apparently was 8.2 meters tall whereas today it stands very tall and proud at nearer to 110 meters. It is a clear landmark on the Yangon skyline and very …
The first full day in Myanmar was spent in Yangon and most of it at the Shwedagon Pagoda. It is one of those things that you really cannot spend time in this country and not visit it. It literally blew me away with its beauty, size, …
My last day in Bangkok was mostly spent wandering around. So far I had been to specific places but I think you really get a feel for a place when you just wander and get a little lost. You never know what you might stumble across that you would have never seen otherwise. To illustrate this point perfectly I have added a couple of photos of a creature and its baby that I spotted simply wandering around by the side of the road! Not really what you would expect in the heart of a big city. Other people stopped to look and the general consensus was that this was some kind of Komodo dragon.
After that experience I wandered through China town which always catches ones attention whichever city in the world you are in with all the red signs and vibrant graphics. There seemed to be an awful lot of shark fin soup available.
Next I came to the Wat Traimit temple where the Golden Buddha lives. This temple is very prominent in the view from my hotel so I was glad to make time to pop in and see this buddha. He is made from 5.5 tons of solid gold. His design dates back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries but it is not entirely known when he was made. It is thought that the statue would have been originally cast in parts in India. At some point he had been entirely encased in plaster with glass inlayed pieces pressed into the surface to disguise it and prevent it from being stollen. This plan worked so well that over the years the golden buddha inside was forgotten about and it wasn’t until 1954 when during an attempt to move the statue it fell badly and some of the plaster cracked off revealing the gold underneath. At this point a program of restoration was started to finally free the buddha. The statue is constructed of nine parts that seamlessly fit together and a key was found embedded in the plaster that enables the statue to be taken apart so it can be moved about more easily. In the temple you can see old photographs of the plaster and there are some original bits of the plaster on display to.
On my final evening in this interesting city I treated myself to a gin and tonic and sat on the roof terrace to watch the sun go down for one last time over the temple with the golden buddha and the sprawling metropolis that is Bangkok. While sitting there I drew the temple as a lasting memory of this trip and thumbed through my sketchbook remembering some of the amazing places I have been fortunate enough to visit.
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About twenty five miles away from the main concentration of temples in Siem Reap is Being Mealea. This temple has been even more enveloped by the jungle and has had no restoration whatsoever or any of the vegetation cut back (which apparently does happen at Ta …
A few extra images from Angkor Wat that didn’t fit into the other categories but deserve a viewing. Much of the building of Angkor Wat is muted earthy and grey tones with some areas of olive green mould and moss. So every now and then …
Vientiane is the capital city of Laos. It isn’t really like most capital cities I’ve visited it echoes the rest of Laos in its laid back ‘what will be will be’ attitude. The traffic is not to bad at all and it is very easy to get around. Grab yourself a tuk tuk if you need to save time or don’t like walking and off you go. There are many temples around the city but if I’m honest at this point many of them are very similar. So here are my recommendations for the two you should go and see.
First off you should definitely visit Wat Si Saket completed in 1824 by King Anouvong. The temple has an amazing array of very old buddhas beautifully placed in covered cloister areas around the courtyard. I am always looking for age and originality in the things I see as for me the layers of age add much to the imagined stories and histories of an object. A buddha with a fresh coat of gold paint doesn’t really do it for me as there are no clues to its past life. Inside the main temple building are some magnificent wall paintings which unfortunately I can’t show you as photography is not allowed. But I can assure you they are well worth a look. The paintings were applied to dry stucco rather than wet plaster (which is what a true fresco is) so this means that they can flake of much more easily so are incredibly fragile. Some restoration has begun but sometimes the new paint is really a bit gaudy so worth seeing before it is all restored!
The second must is Pha That Luang which when translated means ‘Great Stupa’ is a vibrant gold monument and surrounding buildings. It is said to have been on this site since the third century but obviously has had many makeovers and reconstructions over the years the most recent being in the 1930’s. It is one of the most important monuments for the Laos people. If you wander to the right of the stupa there is a huge reclining Buddha and a temple with wonderfully colourful paintings covering the floor and the ceiling.
Another place worth a look is the Patuxai (Victory Gate) which is a war monument in the centre of Vientiane which was built between 1957 and 1968 with concrete donated by the Americans for a runway at the airport but instead was used to build this. It is in memory of those who died in the fight for independence from the French. Its a strange building clearly concrete trying to look like an old monument aka the Arc de Triomphe! It has a big information sign which even says ‘From a closer distance it seems even less impressive, like a monster of concrete’. It has some interesting paintings on the ceiling of the arch. But it is probably best for the views over the city it enables.
I would have liked to go to the textile museum but time and heat got the better of me so anyone whose been I’d be interested to hear about that…another time maybe I’ll get there.
There is one more place that is a must in Vientiane but it deserves its own post…
After a brief stay in Bangkok (I’m heading back there later) I went up north to Chiang Mai. One of the highlights here apart from the elephants because they just trump everything, no pun intended, is the Doi Suthep Temple. I don’t have much time …
So no prizes for guessing I’m in Bangkok! My head is still spinning from the journey and heat/humidity and general business of this city. It is a year since the ninth King of Thailand died and there are hundreds of thousands of extra people here …
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