Begging Bowls and and Benjarong: Bangkok III

"Show us some unusual things," we asked Tod, our Bangkok guide.  Tod had already led us, for two days, to Bangkok highlights, from the Grand Palace to Chinatown.  We did see unusual things, on March 10, 2012, as we traipsed down alleys, checking out the last remaining small forges making Buddhist begging bowls, as we visited a temple honoring female monks, and as we searched on addressless streets for Royal Thai porcelain.  Tod was a meticulous and tech-savvy guide.  Here he is again with his iPhone and iPad, checking out locations and addresses.

First stop was the temple complex on the main route into the city, where the Thai prime minister had welcomed Bill Clinton, during his presidential tour of Bangkok.  The architecture was exquisite, as we had come to expect in Thailand.  This was also a spot where Thais came for special occasions, such as for photographs of graduates.

Next stop was the temple honoring female monks.  The Thai Buddhist church does not presently ordain female monks, although it used to in the past. It does allow women to become Buddhist nuns.  There is a difference: nuns obey a "lesser law" with just a few restrictions, while female monks follow the "higher law," with a hundred or more restrictions, just as the male monks do.  The temple had statues of dozens of female monks, as well as 108 bowls for contributions.  Putting money into all 108 gives good luck. 

We then went looking for begging bowls.  Tod told us that there are just three or four small forges left which make authentic metal begging bowls for monks.  We stopped at the first forge, bought a small bowl, and posed wth the shop owner.  We walked down the alley, saw the whole manufacturing process, and fell in love with a second, full-size, stainless steel bowl at another shop--and posed with that shop owner, too!  Begging bowls are cut from flat pieces of stainless steel, bent into rounded shapes, heated in the forge, and then pounded into the exact shape desired.  There are many variations.  We also saw a pile of "recycled" bowls.  The shop owners had picked up old, rusted bowls from monasteries for refurbishing.

Nearby was a street of shops selling Buddhist religious items.  If this were Jerusalem, we'd be looking at prayer shawls and phylacteries.  Instead, there were  gold-plated (or painted?) statues of Buddha, large and small; shelves of monks' robes in many shades of red, yellow, and orange; buckets of food and toiletries to give to the monks; and full-size, very realistic statues of prominent monks. 

Bangkok is full of people of different cultures.  One prominent subculture is that of India, and we stopped by a Hindu temple.  Since Buddhism originally came from India, then migrated to China, there are architectural influences from both those countries in the Thai Buddhist temples and religious sculptures.  We enjoyed picking out the cultural influences in different buildings.

I asked Tod to show us both the National Museum and the National Art Gallery.  The National Museum was a fascinating place which put everything we had learned about Southeast Asia into context.  It included several halls with displays about Thai history, including the wars fought with Burma and Cambodia, and Thailand's aggressive modernization during the 1800s.  It included statues showing the artistic influences on Thailand from Java and India. It included traditonal Thai musical instruments.  And it showcased beautiful pavilions and elaborate gold carriages, including the carriage which would be used, in a few months, to carry the coffin of the king's sister-in-law to its cremation site.  Preparations had been made for that event for the past year.

It was lunchtime by now, so we rode a tuk-tuk to Khao San Road for lunch.  Khao San Road is the hang-out for young foreigners, and it is full of shops selling massages, pirated music CDs, levi cut-offs, and discount tours all over Thailand.  We ate noodles at an open-air restaurant and watched a couple of Western guys flirting with a table of Western girls across the aisle.

The National Gallery was a change of pace from the traditional crafts shops of Myanmar, Cambodia, and Bangkok.  The Gallery featured Thai modern art.  I was intrigued by an exhibit of paintings which seemed to celebrate an idyllic childhood world--except that this world was full of thatched huts and water buffalos.

We took one more boat ride along Bangkok's river and canals, refreshed by the cool wind in our face on this hot, humid day. We passed not only shacks but distinctively-designed high rise buildings.

And then we went searching for Thai procelain. It was a tough task, since our guidebook gave street addresses which didn't match anything on the ground and the stores didn't answer their phones!  Finally, we happened on a tiny store selling elegant Benjarong, the Royal Thai porcelain which was previously only used by Thai kings and their families.  We brought home this vase for ourselves, as well as some smaller, but very beautiful jars for our children.