Bangkok Guide
Ratanakosin
Wat Phra Kaeo
Opening time: Daily 8.30am–4pm, last admission 3.30pm
Price: B300, includes entry to the Grand Palace and to Vimanmek Palace in Dusit
Address: Inside the Grand Palace complex, Thanon Na Phra Lan; near Tha Chang express-boat pier
Website: www.palaces.thai.net
Hanging together in a precarious harmony of strangely beautiful colours and shapes, Wat Phra Kaeo is the apogee of Thai religious art and the holiest Buddhist site in the country, housing the most important image, the Emerald Buddha. Built as the private royal temple, it occupies the northeast corner of the huge Grand Palace. It receives hundreds of foreign sightseers and at least as many Thai pilgrims every day. As this is Thailand's most sacred site, you can't enter in vests or shorts, but suitable garments can be borrowed at the entrance.
Entering the temple is like stepping onto a lavishly detailed stage set, from the immaculate flagstones right up to the gaudy roofs. The main sanctuary has been augmented so often it looks like the work of a wildly inspired child. The walls sparkle with gilt and coloured glass and are supported by 112 golden garudas (birdmen) holding serpents. Inside, a nine-metre-high pedestal supports the tiny Emerald Buddha, a figure whose mystique draws pilgrims from all over Thailand. The sixty-centimetre jadeite image was discovered when lightning cracked open an ancient stupa in Chiang Rai in northern Thailand in the early fifteenth century. The image was then moved around the north, dispensing miracles wherever it went, before being taken to Laos for two hundred years. It has three costumes, one for each season: the crown and ornaments of an Ayutthayan king for the hot season; a gilt monastic robe dotted with blue enamel for the rainy season, when the monks retreat into the temples; and a full-length gold shawl to wrap up in for the cool season.
Extending for over a kilometre in the arcades that run inside the temple walls, the murals of the Ramayana depict every blow of this ancient Hindu story of the triumph of good over evil, using the vibrant buildings of the temple itself as backdrops. The story is told in 178 panels, from the discovery of the baby Sita, the heroine, floating in a gold urn on a lotus leaf through to the climax, when Rama, the hero, kills the ten-headed demon Totsagan (Ravana).