Wat's up, Doc?

After the elephant ride, we went to a local restaurant on the river for – surprise – Thai food! It actually was very good, and different from what we’d had earlier. Instead of seafood, we had some kind of river bass (yes, it was still looking at us!), fried spring rolls, a coconut-lime soup and something with chicken. It’s all good, but have to admit – it’s harder to get a grasp on the subtleties of the different things than trying to figure out all the Italian noodles in existence.

We saw lots more Wats (temples, mostly destroyed ones) with lots of stupas around them.  Information we got today explained that they aren’t exactly like columbariums (columbaria?) but are more like headstones. They’re memorials to someone, and may or may not have relics inside of them.

Most of them were originally surrounded by a courtyard enclosed by a gallery with a wooden roof. This was good for the invading hoards but bad for the temples, since it made for really hot fires when an army either advanced or retreated and barbqued everything available. As a result, many of these are simply ruins because when you heat plaster covered brick like that it tends to shatter.

We were starting to be overwhelmed with both Wat and Stupa, much like in Rome when we eventually had cathedral overload.

They’re everywhere. More than Baptist Churches in the Midwest. There’s lots of them.

And we won’t go into details about each and every one of them, choosing instead to show a few pictures. You can appreciate the beauty and grandeur that once existed, and even the ruins are beautiful in their own way.

Wats, or temples, are named according to the most important Buddha image located in them.

One of them was interesting – the Wat Maha That, at one time had relics of the Lord Buddha Suddoreth. It survived the ravages of the Burmese war only to be struck by lighting and destroyed, and has collapsed twice since then.

This is also the place where the Burmese chopped off the heads of all the Buddhas in 1767 while on their Reunion Tour through Thailand. One of the heads happened to fall in amongst the roots of a tree and was simply left there to grow, where it’s now a major attraction.

By this point it was pushing 5:00.  We'd been on the road since 9:00, it was hot, we were sticky, and it was definitely time to have a shower and something cold to drink.  After all, our ride to the airport on Tuesday happened at 5:20 in the morning -- it was not going to be a late night for us in any event.