State, Society, and Me: Wat Arun

Finishing out this trio of temples is Wat Arun, located a 3-baht ferry ride across the river from Wat Pho.

Wat Arun means "Temple of the Dawn." Apparently that is because the temple shines in the morning light. I don't know if that is the real reason, though. I bet it has more to do with the name of some Hindu hero or god. It was once the home to the Emerald Buddha before it was moved across the river.

Anyways, to get to this temple, you just walk to down to the Tha Tien pier, about 150 yards from the entrance to Wat Pho.

It doesn't look like much, and it really isn't. But it is located near the Thai Naval headquarters.

Inside you hand over 3 baht ($0.10) to a nice elderly woman at the turnstile, and hop in line to get on the ferry. They'll wait for it to get full, which takes a few minutes. Then you are off to the Wat Arun dock on the other side of the river (technically the dock is called Wat Chang Pier - Wat Chang is an old name for Wat Arun).

Once there, you buy a 50 baht entry fee ($1.75) to get into the temple. Then you cross a courtyard where you can pay 200 baht ($6.50) to dress up in Thai dance costumes and take pictures. I personally didn't do it because I was alone on this trip, and I didn't want to be that lonely tourist who dresses up in Thai clothes and then has no one to take his picture.

Anyways, back to the temple. It is quite tall, and the stairs are very narrow.

To show you how narrow, here are my feet. My heels are backed up against the stair behind me. I figure you've got to have a men's size 6 or smaller to fit your entire foot on them.

Further evidence: small children climb the stairs on their hands and knees. Even for kids they are narrow... and steep.

The two girls on the left in this picture are Indonesian. They were complaining loudly about how scary the stairs were, so I struck up a conversation (in Indonesian) with their mom. Kinda fun to speak Indonesian in Thailand.

From the top you get a nice view of the river all the way to the Rama 8 bridge (left corner) and Wat Phra Kaew across the way.

In appearance Wat Arun is more muted than the temples across the river. Most of its color comes from the porcelain used to decorate the temple.

Everything is encrusted in porcelain, including the demon warriors around the temple. I found it beautiful in a different way than the previous two temples.

There's a lot going on with all the porcelain, but none of it is extremely eye-gripping. You have to look harder to see the contrasts and details. I enjoyed looking around at all the artwork. I wish my camera were a little better at capturing it, which is one of my perennial complaints. It probably isn't the camera, it's probably me. Tools are only as good as the hands that wield them, I suppose.

I'll just keep blaming the camera.

From the top of Wat Arun, I did get to take one of my favorite pictures. If you look closely (and have the original image rather than this compressed one), you can see a young monk hurrying down this street. He was late for a ceremony going on in one of the temple structures.

I followed the sounds of chanting to this scene where monks were conducting some prayers. This was where the young monk in the prior picture was headed.

I then wandered around taking pictures of the temple complex. It was quite extensive.

Here is another building in the temple complex. This one is coated with plaster and has porcelain tiles embedded in the walls for decoration. It is very bright when the sun hits it.

Guardian statue.

Little dog guardian statue. These things must have been fierce; there were probably 50 of them surrounding one of the temples. Then again, perhaps their numbers indicate that they weren't fierce. Perhaps it took 50 do to the work of one big dog.

I suppose we may never know.