day 7....invading the elusive wat phra keao

today we woke up without a clear gameplan but turned out to be one of my favorite days in my entire bkk escapade. chu asked me where i wanna go and i had no idea. i browsed the net and checked out his bangkok bible. i was drawn only to one place, wat phra keao. the first 2 attempts remained just that, attempts. this time i was so bent on visiting that we defied strong rain and thunder. while in the cab i told chu that maybe the universe is telling me to not visit at all. as soon as we got to the place though i completely forgot about what the universe might've been telling me.i was astounded at the beauty of the place. not even the sea of stranded tourists from the entrance to the first hall and tents set up probably for those who signed up for a group tour or something discouraged me. i saw just the temple roofs glimmering and i icouldn't wait to start touring. i needed to be a liitle patient and wait for the rain to at least stop raining so hard. luckily it stopped so yay! when we finally got in the temple complex, i was super awestruck. this place is like the most magnificent of all the magnificent structures i've seen. i must've said " oh my gosh it's so beautiful here " every after 30 seconds. anyone can get lost at the beauty of millions of colorful reflective tiles so artistically put together. each of the buildings looked to me like a piece of jewelry elaborately encrusted with precious emeralds, rubies, zirconsand diamonds. being there is like being in a glowing golden city ( think camelot's asian or eastern version ). inside the main temple ( pity pictures are not allowed to be taken ) that housed the emerald buddha was a solid golden altar so huge it occupied more than half of the entire floor space. the walls and ceiling was like one huge painting of the ancient thai people that depicted mostly their way of life and the royal battles. for awhile i thought they might be the thai version of the painting in the sistine chapel.

a few walks from the temple of the temple of the emerald buddha was the grand palace and yes it's really grand. the architecture is very thai but the ground/garden was accutely western. they totally work together though. the two huge elephant statues which i suspect were made of marbles drew a lot of attention. the lamp posts i thought added a lot of romance to the place ( or maybe because i generally think of lamp posts as romantic ). i couldn't help but think how our malacanang palace would look rather ordinary compared to this. i couldn't get enough of the whole sight.

after the tour we got hungry so we went to this food place just outside the palace complex. this is where i got a taste of one of traditional thai dessert called black sesame dumplings in ginger syrup. it's sooo good. that nutty, not so sweet and tangy taste of it i will not forget unless i become amnesiac. there was still some time before we pick up chu's laptop to we strolled at the nearby park. for 20 baht worth of corn we got to feed the pigeons. they were friendly creatures.it was such joy ( and well pain ) feeding them on my palm. i felt like being in st peter square.

it was a lovely day indeed!