It's an Exciting World

The tour started out by taking us to the temple of the golden Buddha. It was very pretty and amazing that so much gold was in a single statue. The statue had been hidden from pillagers by a layer of plaster like the emerald Buddha and many others. While the practice of hiding the expensive Buddhas has kept some of the great ones around it also led to the practice of chopping of Buddha heads to see what they are made of.
We saw how the wallpaper is actually a lot of intricate hand paintings and all the different types of offerings.
We then went to the center of the city to see the city monument that is supposed to house the guardian spirit of the city. Bangkok is odd in that it has two, since they made a new one but didn’t have a place to put the old one.
The temple of the emerald Buddha and the royal grounds were next and all of it was very pretty. We were shown how some of the monks were allowed to have fun with the religious paintings. It was also interesting how the religions fused together with it being mostly Buddhist with a lot of Hinduism and a splash of local spiritualism.
The thrones and royal items were neat to see and the elephant parking was also neat.
The next stop was the temple of the reclining Buddha and the main Buddha statue there was massive. It was interesting also that the bottom of the feet were a mural.
There were lots of other smaller things at that temple since it was meant to be a teaching temple for Thai massage and later yoga.