Thailand: Wat Arun

We walked across the busy street, through a market area, and to a jetty along the river offering quick ferries directly across it to another famous Buddhist temple called Wat Arun. I read that there are 31,200 Buddhist temples across Thailand and it does seem like Bangkok was full of them. We visited probably the 3 most famous.

Wat Arun is also known as Temple of the Dawn, and is named after Aruna, the Indian God of Dawn. It is 79 meters high and represents Mount Meru. The temple used to house the so-called Emerald Buddha, which is now in the temple on the Grand Palace property. It's the next temple we'll visit, but not today. Wat Arun was built in the 17th Century and has lots of porcelain decorations.

I'll shut up now and just show you.

This is a picture of another boat ferry from aboard our own boat ferry.

Once we got off the boat, we walked directly to the entrance to Wat Arun.

Ah, I was wondering where the scary guards were.

This is a section of the mural inside the temple. Elaborate murals depicting Buddhist stories covered every inch of wall inside every temple

Outside, another collection of Buddhas.

Ah, the bells. The kids were noisily clanging them for a few seconds before I stopped them. I'm sure the monks appreciated that. I explained the idea of listening to the bell from the very start until the absolute ending of sound and how calming that can be. They took turns sitting on one of the benches and ringing them, then sitting patiently and eagerly listening until no more sound could be heard. Again, another special calm moment.

Look what Daddy found!

Big Boy Buddha

And now we climb,

checking out some porcelain on the way.

And the view from the second level is kinda nice. The air is slightly cooler.

But up we go to the top for these amazing views.

I cannot explain with words how steep these steps are. In fact, they didn't seem steep going up even, but coming down with three shaking little children? Yep, those are steep!

See what I mean?

And then we sat down at a market and enjoyed some ice cream before bargaining for a deal on a longboat tour of Bangkok, which is what comes next. No more temples for today, just the cool breeze on the river as our boat zooms along.