He and his family certainly enjoy the trappings of royalty, as we\u2019ve seen the past two days, having visited the summer palace yesterday, the Grand Palace today, and various and sundry palaces today. The current palaces were heavily influenced by Chulalongkorn, otherwise known as Rama V, who was one of the children in the King and I<\/em>, where Yul Brynner, as Rama IV, King Mongkut, fell under the spell of Anna, and his son brought lots of Western influences into the then Kingdom of Siam. Under Mongkut, the Thais built a summer palace that for all the world looked like Versailles; it\u2019s very European. The Grand Palace, similarly, has some very European The Lord Buddha received his due today from us as well. There are reputedly over 650 Wats (Buddhist temples) in Thailand, a religion the Thais share with the approximately 5 million Chinese in Bangkok\u2014who control much of the larger businesses (as our guide remarked, they\u2019ve been in the country for years, and they\u2019re hard-working; we\u2019re not). The Wat we visited was one Finally, we\u2019ve spent more time on the Chao Phraya, which is the \u201cRiver of Kings.\u201d We came back from Ayudhya by boat yesterday, and had a dinner cruise tonight on the river, that took us past the palaces\u2014and the newer palaces for the rich, like the Mandarin Oriental hotel, usually ranked as one of the top five hotels in the world. The buffet, thanks to our guide, included Pad Thai, one of the most popular and famous of the Thai dishes.<\/p>\n Tomorrow we get on the train for Butterworth Malaysia at 2:49, an overnight train ride.<\/p>\n The adventure continues!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It occurred to me today that Bangkok, at least for the tourist, and based on our two fully-filled days, is a tribute to two rulers\u2014the Lord Buddha in a religious sense, and the Lord Rama (the ruling dynasty) in a political sense. They\u2019re related. The Chakri family has supplied the kings since the foundation of … Continue reading “Palaces to the Lord Rama and the Lord Buddha”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9043,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/9043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2009\/05\/464306354_10100960298735847_4160972149445235092_n.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2009\/05\/09trip.jpg\")
<\/a>buildings, but with the Thai roofs (which I learned today have a triangular shaped roof with the Garuda at the top\u2014a bird-like figure who was the carrier of Lord Shiva [look up your Hindu\/Buddhist gods]\u2014and the Naga, a snake, at the corners of the triangle), making the appearance definitely Thai-European. We were in the palace this morning, and, ala London, there was a changing of the guard\u2014spiffy uniforms, white pith helmets, not so spiffy drill. We were told the soldiers had no bullets, ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2009\/05\/463556330_10100953991705187_15777751731003234_n.jpg\")
<\/a>very unlike London, but then the royal family no longer lives in the Grand Palace, which is used only to house dignitaries, and possibly impress tourists, which it certainly does. The other palaces we saw were interesting, too, but less grand\u2014a summer house made of golden teak that had been moved from elsewhere in the country to Bangkok, and still had the marks from a bomb that had been dropped on it in World War II (when, interestingly, Thailand sided with the Japanese and declared war on the United States)\u2014it had a lot of windows, which indicated before air conditioning there was only one way to cool off, and that was to depend on breezes, or what was known as a pukka walla, a contraption which allowed a servant to foot-pump a fan. The final \u201cpalace\u201d we saw had been the home of one of the sons of Chulalongkorn; he was an avid collector of a variety of things\u2014including some sculptures that had once been at Angkor Wat\u2014whose family had various homes from around the country brought to Bangkok to house his collection. The prince himself had been sent into exile in 1932; when the generals ended the absolute monarchy, the prince, as the head of the absolute monarch\u2019s state council, was invited to leave, and lived his life in Indonesia.<\/p>\n<\/a>of the Royal Temples. It\u2019s in the grounds of the grand palace, and houses the Emerald Buddha, one of the most important relics of the faith in Thailand. The whole complex houses statuary that are the typical \u201cguardians\u201d of the Buddhist temples, but with the colorful cut glass and precious stones and the faces that are typical Thai. It\u2019s a stunning display that still impresses me after years of coming here.<\/p>\n