Travel Day 1088 – Bangkok, THAILAND
After seeing the un-touristic sight of Mahakan Fort yesterday, today I decided to join the masses of fellow foreigners and visit Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn…
Central Prang of Wat Arun in Bangkok
Wat Arun happened to be another sight that I always wanted to visit when in Bangkok, but since it was situated across the river, it always seemed to be too far a way and quite difficult to get to. But as it turned out, it was actually extremely easy to reach Wat Arun. All I had to do was pass Wat Pho with the Reclining Buddha and then catch a local ferry at the same point where I had been watching the sun set over the river a few days prior…
The ferry came with an extremely reasonable price tag of 3 baht and climbing the tall prang, the really tall central tower, set me back by another 50 baht. The prices seemed overall somewhat reasonable in comparison to other sights and I was more than excited to finally see this wat with its interestingly shaped Khymer style tower. It actually reminded me vaguely of the other Buddhist Stupas, Chorten or Chedi I had seen before…
Overlooking Wat Arun in Bangkok
Actually right at the site of Wat Arun had always been a Buddhist temple as a part of the former capital Thonburi. But when Bangkok as a city was founded, most of the temples moved to the other side of the river and so it wasn’t until the 18th century that the tall prang plus the four surrounding ones were constructed. While the towers were built with all sorts of iconography from demons over Chinese soldiers, Hindu gods to Buddhist symbols, a lot of the detail work was actually done in sea shells and broken porcelain which had arrived in Bangkok as sailing ballast from Chinese ships…
For me personally the best feature of the temple was the possibility of climbing the two upper platforms circling the central prang. Not only was there an amazing view of Bangkok and the whole of Wat Arun, but also the climb up the extremely steep stairs was quite a challenge and it was actually quite amusing to watch other people trying to master them without tumbling down…
Khymer Style Prangs of Wat Arun
Once I had taken-in all the views and scenes, I then climbed back down myself and went for a little stroll around the compound of Wat Arun. It was overall quite a nice place and it seemed interesting enough to see Bangkok from the other side of the river. Actually there seemed to be more temples on this side, but I rather decided to leave their exploration for another time when visiting Bangkok again and I knew already that would be rather sooner than later…
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