Our first stop is the temple that has a 5.5 ton solid gold Buddha - yes that is right - solid gold - worth £28mil ish! Even though it was quite early the temple itself was reasonably busy. It wasn't very big and on the way up the stairs to see the gold Buddha a guy came out of nowhere and started taking our pictures - like cameras right in our faces, it was totally like we were being papped! Yet another celeb experience of our holiday! I'm walking past with my sunnies on and hand over my face! Turns out he was using the pictures to make badges to sell - if he'd said this he might have found people would pose instead of looking away! We climbed the rest of the way and there it was - the most shiny Buddha you have ever seen. Apparently it was discovered under layers of plaster - what a great find. Apparently it is one of Thailand's most important Buddhas but having said that there are a number of these.
From here we headed to another important site - that of the reclining Buddha. Now we have seen one already in the Monkey Temple cave and we thought that was large but wow this was humongous! Trying to take a photo you can't get it easily in one shot. Its feet were made of mother of pearl - this was definitely a highlight. Around the temple that housed this giant Buddha were statues showing how to massage as apparently there are important links between this site and the traditional Thai massage. There were a number of elaborately decorated pagodas. In the base is where you place the ashes of loved ones and the pagoda forms a kind of memorial, but they have run out of room for pagodas so now the ashes go in boxes in the walls behind the many many statues of Buddha.
The final temple on our tour was the marble temple. Not so much a complex of buildings like at the last place but one elaborate and sparkly white temple, made from Italian marble. It was very quiet when we arrived mid morning and when we approached the temple we found a ceremony going on inside. Young apprentice monks were being ordained to be a full on monk. They were all dressed in white, bowed, with their heads shaved. One at a time they would approach an older monk where he would give them their orange robes. They then exited the temple to an area outside where the elders helped them get dressed in their new orange attire. They then had to go and speak individually to an elder monk before collecting their pot to collect offerings from the locals for the monastery. It was fascinating to watch and see them dedicate their life to the religion. You can do this for just a period of time and not your whole life and then return to your regular life after. That was interesting to find out - this is only for boys/men though, not women.
5.15pm was our pick up - this leaves 2 hours to the ferry - we nearly missed it! I kid you not, the traffic was ridiculous. Now I know it's Friday but we sat at the end of our street for about an hour - no exaggeration! The pick up guy was panicking as we were late for our next pick up and we started discussing what to do instead! Slowly we crept along and eventually the pick up guy jumped out, ran along the road to collect the other person and ran back along the street, whilst we sat in the traffic! We made it by the skin of our teeth. No time to look in the mall attached to the dock, it was straight through - flower pinned on, photo took and to our seat! At least then we could relax. Table 1 didn't make it and we left without them - we hovered around the river then went back and picked them up. At least our food came in courses, theirs came all at once! The food was amazing but there was a lot of it. Spring rolls and crispy baskets filled with chicken and sweetcorn to start, then Tom Yum soup, then a main of rice, fish, green curry and prawn and broccoli - each! Then fruit, mango and sticky rice for pud! The views were good with the Grand Palace, Temple of Dawn and others all lit up and there was also some traditional dancing on our boat too. I'm glad we made it!!
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