Visiting four Buddhist Temples in Bangkok, Thailand 2020/Carlos Pueblo

Visiting four Buddhist Temples in Bangkok, Thailand 2020/Carlos Pueblo

Nancy the beautiful guide took us to visit four Buddhist Temples in Bangkok, Thailand on our second day while we arrived in the city second time. These temples are four of the most famous 300 plus temples in the city. Thailand is one of the Buddhist nations in the southeast Asia. She is not only pretty but also very much well learned girl. It was a very quick and compact guided tour. I am a Buddhist and I do check my photos and find out the names of temples where I have visited, Wat Traimit, Wat Rachabophit, and Wat Arun. They are all gorgeous and unique very much different from those in China and Japan.

Wat Traimit is the Golden Temple with a 5.5 tons gold of current Buddha statue. It was build gradually throughout several hundred years and finally located to the current location nearby the Grand Palace on an island. The architectures are all very colorful and in harmony above all. We are allowed to enter the main temple with shoes removed. Nancy explained some of the significant and I understood very well because I studied the Buddhism and history very well when I was much younger in age and learned from my father and some distinguish monks.

She arranged the driver to pick us up once we finished one site, actually it was a private tour with only four of us. We went to the Wat Pho, the Reclining Buddha Temple. All temples we have visited is mainly hosted the present Buddha, the Gautama Buddha or we call Sakyamuni from the northern India about 2,500 years ago. He is a great teacher and philosopher. The reclining statue is a symbol of his enlightenment under a Bodhi tree and what is his enlightenment? It is very simple to live a meaningful way of life everyday. I copy it from a Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, from his book Buddha and Jesus are brothers.

The third temple is Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn with many beautiful ash towers on site. We Buddhists believe that the human body is a loan from the world; therefore, when we die, we do the cremation and return the ash to the world. She told me those ash inside the pagoda were rich folks and I could imagine. I taught her how to play the divination, a device developed in China and nothing to do with the Buddhism yet they were inside a gift shop for visitors to try. She was amazed.

Because I like to visit Chulalongkorn University, a distinguish engineering school and medical school, she took us to visit Wat Ratchabophit, King Chulalongkorn's Temple built in 1869. Almost every king of Thailand has built his own temple. In Thailand, every youth male must do his monk duty for one year like some of us do the military service or draft when we reached 18 or finished college. It is another beautiful temple.

We had had so much fun tour on temples and also passing through the most beautiful sections of the city. We passed by the Grand Palace, the residence of present King's mother, and many lovely city scenery.