The Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew

Yesterday Andre and I took in the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (A wat being a buhuddist temple). It was amazing!

The Wat:
The whole thing is made up of a series of buildings, most one the ones in the wat are compltely covered in mosaic tiles. It is visually stunning. The walls are massive and considering the whole thing was built in the 15th century, it's in suprisingly good nick! There are these fantastic statues of mythical creatures all over the place, each is elaboratly painted. I guess the wat is one of those places where i just don't have words to describe it. Well, actually, there is one word... shiny. Honestly, there is so much gold and mirror and glass in this place that the glare is almost painful, but it's so beautiful that you welcome it (except for one idiodic moment where i tried to take a photo of myself against the gold of the dome with the sun glaring into my eyes, off the gold, off my shiny camera, back into my eyes. i'm stupid!). The coolest thing about the wat were these funky monkey demon things. Of course, with them standing in a variety of bizarre poses Andre and I were obligated to copy them for the sake of prosperity. Ok, I admit it. Prosperity be damned, it was bloody funny!

The big deal about Wat Phra Kaew is that it houses the Emerald Bhudda. Which I think personally sounds like it belongs in an Indiana Jones movie... Indiana Jones and The Curse of the Emerald Bhudda... not that i can actually attest to any real curse on the icon! This particular statue has been fought over by Thailand, Laos and Myanmar for hundreds of years. The whole thing was covered in plaster and put into hiding and it wasn't until some clumsy Thai knocked it over and shattered the encasing plaster that they realised the whole thing was made of jade. (Emerald is a misnomer... it was believed to be made up of that until about a hundred years ago and rumour and name were both firmly embedded in Thai conciousness by then). Anyway, it's a big deal... thousands of poeple come to visit the Emerald Bhudda a day and you can be thrown out of the Wat for pointing your feet at it or taking a photo of it. To the thai's both are the equivalant of spittingon or graffitting it.

The Grand Palace:
Not so cool as the wat, it's a bunch of fancy shmancy buildings. We did see a Thai version of the changing of the gaurds which was cool. Except the gaurds were about tweleve years old and looked like they were not old enough to be sporting the fire arms they were. Other than that the whole thing was lovely and peaceful with a bunch of cool elephant statues, all of which are in rememberance of the white elephants the Thai kings used to keep, though i'm not sure to what purpose. I guess when you're the king of Thailand you don't need a reason for doing anything. You just do it.

Wish I was a king. Or a queen even. Although you feel a bit like it here. People keep commenting on my white skin and my smile. The weirdest thing that has happened so far is when a little old lady came up to me in the street, slapped my on the tummy mutters something in Thai, gave me a winning smile and walked away cackling in delight. Andre and I ust sort of stood there in bemusement!

Other than that it's all normal really!! Andre and I are going to head up to Chaing Mai in a few days. Do some trekking, elephant riding and maybe some bamboo rafting or a cooking school. Haven't decided which yet. But I will endevour to keep you informed. Thanks for all your emials and MSN chats and stuff. The time difference with Australia isn't so unreasonable here so I'm luckily catching quite a few of you online! I will in the next few days try to upload some photos for you, I had a go today but the computer went a bit spiv! Never mind, it'll wait.

Anyway, talk to you soon lovies,

Simone xxx