On July 23rd we set out to see the Golden Buddha. We had really wanted to see it the previous day, but since we had a few issues with our tuk tuk driver we didn’t have time.
We decided to get into a taxi and go directly there instead of attempting to find it ourselves. We asked the driver to take us to the “Golden Buddha”, and I pointed to where it was on the map. His English wasn’t too good, but since he reacted with secure understanding we trusted that we would be taken to the “Golden Buddha”. We were actually taken to the “Golden Mountain”, but of course we didn’t figure this out until after we paid him and he drove away. We really do not have any luck with these taxi and tuk tuk drivers!
We decided to climb up the “Golden Mountain” to see the Wat Saket temple at the top. The Golden Mountain (also known as Phu Khao Thong) is an artificial hill built on the Wat Saket grounds which houses a Buddhist temple on top.
The walk up the mountain was very enjoyable as the path is surrounded by a lot of beautiful greenery and plants.
Once we got to the top we looked around the temple:
There are 8 Buddha positions, one for each day of the week (Wednesday has two, one for day and one for night). If you want to make a donation to a temple then you always donate to the Buddha that corresponds to the day of the week that you were born on. In the below photo you can see each Buddha pose, and the days go from left to right: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Morning, Wednesday Night, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. (I mentioned this in a previous blog post probably about 6 or 7 weeks ago).
We had a great view of the city from the top:
After visiting the mountain we really wanted to see the Golden Buddha, and finally were able to get a tuk tuk that actually brought us there!
The Golden Buddha is a Buddha statue made entirely from pure gold. It has a height of 15 feet 9 inches, and is 12 feet 5 inches in diameter and it weights approximately 5 tons. It is the world’s largest solid gold statue and is over 700 years old.
The Golden Buddha was originally covered in plaster so it would not be discovered by Thailand’s enemies. It was moved to Bangkok about 200 years ago, and it’s true composition was completely forgotten. In 1955 there was construction on the building where the statue was being housed and the it was to be moved to a new building. During the move the Buddha statue was dropped to the ground, and was then completely covered with mud and water when a huge storm flooded the city later that day. With the mud and rain, the plaster began to crack, revealing that the Buddha statue was in fact made of pure gold. It has been cherished as a sacred object ever since.
The Golden Buddha is housed in the large temple shown below, on the top floor:
From there we wanted to walk around the area, but got a little disoriented. A security guard from a store hopped outside to help us with our map and suggested a few temples to visit. He then arranged a tuk tuk to take us to the temples and wait for us while we visited them. This all sounded a bit too familiar from our previous day’s adventures. For some reason we decided to take the deal (about $1.5 CAN for transportation to a few temples).
Our first stop was the small temple of Wat Chamongkhon. It was very pretty and had a lot of greenery around the temple.
After visiting this temple we started getting a bit suspicious with our tuk tuk driver when our next stop was a jewellery shop. We told him we were not interested in buying jewellery and didn’t want to stop but he insisted that he needed to fill up his gas tank. He said we could look around in the shop while he did it. It all sounded too familiar…. We said we would wait on the benches outside the shop while he went to get gas. He said no, and insisted that we needed to go inside for 10 minutes and then he would take us to our next destination. We finally unhappily obliged, but knew that he must be getting something out of it.
When we got back into the tuk tuk he told us that our next destination would be our last stop and if we wanted him to take us back to our hotel we would have to pay an extra $7 CAN (on top of the $1.5 CAN we were already going to pay him for taking us around to the temples). We argued that this was not part of the deal and without much arguing he smiled and agreed he would return us to our hotel. We weren’t too confident with the arrangement.
Our next stop was the Wat Benchamabophit, also known as the marble temple. It is one of the largest and most beautiful temples in Bangkok. It was built in 1899 and is made from Italian marble. The temple has been submitted to UNESCO for consideration as a possible future World Heritage Site. The grounds are very large and beautiful.
When we came out of the temple our tuk tuk driver was gone! He had waited for us outside every location but this time he was no where to be found! Luckily we hadn’t paid him anything, so we had gotten all our transportation so far for free, but we still felt ripped off! We were far from the center of town and very far from our hotel!
Some locals saw us and told us our driver left, and they filled us in on the common practices of local tuk tuk drivers. Tuk tuk drivers will offer to take tourists around to all the sites for a cheap price, but in addition to the sites they will stop at extra stores and tourist offices along the way. If the driver can convince their passengers to spend 10 minutes inside the store then the driver will receive 5 liters of free gas from each establishment. Even though we didn’t pay our driver, he received free gas from our visit to the jewellery store, so he didn’t actually need our money and that’s why he took off and left us stranded. He left us to go looking for another set of innocent tourists to scam. We finally understood what happened to us the previous day with our tuk tuk driver. We couldn’t believe how devious these Thai people can be! They all look so nice and helpful, with big smiles on their faces, but really they were lying to us and using us for free gas!
At that moment we decided to make a rule to never use another tuk tuk again! The good thing was that we didn’t actually lose any money since we hadn’t paid him, so we hopped in a real taxi and went back to our hotel.
We have been enjoying our time in Bangkok thoroughly! It’s a great city with so many things to offer!
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