Four Wats, Three Friends and a Flower Market

Hmm...this title is strikingly similar to the last one.  Perhaps I am even more formulaic than even I analyzed.  Anyway, It's been forever!  And because of that, there will be A LOT of pictures!  In a lot of ways a lot has happened, and in many others, nothing has.  I'll get to the details though.

Sunday night I got a call from Mark, the guy who does the prison ministry.  He said that Henry, the guy who teaches the Bible study I go to on Monday morning, was sick and could I prepare a lesson in case he's not any better by tomorrow.  So I agreed to do it.  He said, "this is front line mission work," referring to the phone call the night before.  Henry was worse in the morning so I did my thing.  It went really well.  The guys asked a lot of questions and there was some good discussion.  I'm not glad Henry got sick, but I'm glad I got that opportunity.  Please continue to pray for the men who come; many of them are trying to work out some important decisions.

Tuesday was amazing!  Itim, one of the students from the weekday English class at Prathunam took me with two of her friends (one of which is also a student at the weekday class) to do some site-seeing.  We started at the Golden Mountain.  It's basically this big pile of earth that was built up centuries ago by one of the kings.  There's a shrine or temple at the top.  Here's the whole thing looking up.  First is was a mound of earth, then one king added teak braces, then one finally built the concrete wall around it.

There's all these giant bells at several places all the way up.  It's supposed to be good luck to ring every one...so I did.

This is the golden chedi at the top (a chedi is basically that tower thing).  And Itim is the one standing in front of it.

This is me, Itim, and her friend that came with us and a view of the city from the top.  Umm...I'm pretty tall here.

You have to take your shoes off any time you go into a wat (temple).  See:

There were a lot of Buddha images set up inside.  There was also this thing where you take a cup that has sticks in it.  Each stick has a different number on it and you shake the cup gently until one falls out.  Then you get the fortune with the corresponding number.  Here's mine; not bad:

These are the three ladies who so kindly guided me around the city!  Yet another display of the infinite Thai hospitality!

Next we went to the King Rama VII Museum (the current king is Rama IX, he is Rama VII's grandnephew, I think).  Anyways, of course to me it was pretty cool, but I'll only share one picture.  It's the royal Thai china...not to be confused with the royal Chinese tie...

Next we went to a wat (I don't know the name).  This is a good example of traditional Thai architecture.  Most of the wats are in this style, but not all.

There are a lot of Buddha images there.  The whole interior of the outermost wall is lined with them.

Then we went to a medical/forensics museum.  We're talking human bones, preserved limbs, mummified bodies, the whole nine yards...no pictures though.  After that, we rode the ferry across the Chao Phraya River to Wat Arun.  It's ginormous, but we climbed it too.

On the ferry ride back across the river, it poured!  For quite a while.  That's why they call this rainy season.  But eventually it stopped, so we went to Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha.  It is the oldest wat in Bangkok and the largest.  The main Buddha image is 46 metres (about 150 feet) long and 14 metres (about 45 feet) high.  It's in one long room, but you can barely see it all at one time.

Here's the whole thing but the feet.

Then we went to the Siam Museum, a museum of the history of the Thai people and was really interesting.  They made me dress up in these old costumes, so I made Itim join me.

It was a great day.  I was definitely tired by the end, but it was well worth it.  At the end of the day we walked through the flower market.  There are just stalls and stalls of different kinds of flowers.  It smells wonderful.  I saw a bundle of about 50 small roses for 40 baht (that's about $1.10).  We had street food for supper which made me a little nervous, but my stomach handled it fine.  Praise God for that!  I was definitely pray the whole time, "O Jesus, let this not make me sick."  And it didn't.

Wednesday I spent all day at the office and then moved to the Guest House from Joe and Jeanie's.  That really was it...nothing exciting...except that I went to the movies again.  There are two girls here with the Journeyman Program.  It's a two year program for college graduates.  Their assignment is "out in the boonies" as they say, but they're here in Bangkok for a couple of weeks.  It was good to get to hang out with them.

Thursday I went to prison in the morning then the BSC in the evening.  At the English Corner I got to talk to a Buddhist monk.  Well, it was mostly language practice, not much conversation, but he was reading a book about the Pali Cannon (the Buddhist scripture of sorts) so I was helping him with the English and got to learn a bit myself.  He even gave me some tea and cookies as thanks!

Well, that was another long one, but things have been pretty busy!  Thanks for reading everyone!