The Grand Palace

The past and current politics of Thailand is incredibly confusing and complicated. It was ruled by an absolute monarchy until 1932, when democracy was introduced. Since then, democracy hasn’t exactly flourished as it’s been ruled mostly by military regimes; the country has experienced occasional uprisings, attempted coups, and other inconveniences to those in charge. I’d say democracy is still a work in progress. However, one thing has remained the same regardless of who has been head of government – the monarchy, though legally powerless, is revered. This is in practice and by law. The constitution states that the king is "enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated." It is, in fact, illegal (and socially taboo) to say anything derogatory about the royal family. Clearly, freedom of speech is not in the constitution!

On our second day, we first visited the Grand Palace complex, which illustrated just how closely bound the monarchy is to religion (95% of Thais are Buddhist) and government. At times, they were indistinguishable. The Grand Palace complex was established in 1782 and includes a royal residence (now used as guest space for the royalty’s visitors), throne halls, government offices and the renowned Temple of the Emerald Buddha…all on 53 acres, surrounded by a tall, thick city wall. I won’t attempt to walk you through each of the buildings, but will show you some of the interesting features.

At first glance, Thai architecture (in my opinion) is scary and garish. Nearly all buildings of importance feature multiple roof tiers with many ornaments for decoration. The spire-like objects at the end look like sharp weapons. It takes a bit of getting used to. However, when you get up close, you can see the amazingly intricate detail that has been used. Brightly colored, one-inch glass and gold (sometimes real gold) tiles covered many of the buildings and the woodwork was very elaborate.

Inside the temples were also intricately decorated with paintings with scenes from Buddhism’s sacred stories.

Religious stories were also built into the buildings.

While the art and architecture were explained to us by the guide, I won't repeat them here as I can't say I completely understood the meaning.

Non-Buddhists were welcome in the temples, but were required to remove shoes and to wear sarongs (men and women alike) if legs weren’t covered to below the knee. It’s also considered very offensive to point feet toward Buddha (or others).

One area of the complex looked very British and completely out of character. It turns out that one of the former kings had studied in Europe and decided that he liked it so much he wanted to include colonial architecture in the complex. Later, someone must have had second thoughts about it though, as the roof was removed and replaced with a traditional Thai roofline! Here it is:

And here is one of the guards that stood very, very still in front of that building:

In the small world department, I should mention that we ran into one of Lydia’s classmates on our tour. It was probably the highlight for her during this part of our day!

To be continued...