Tall golden spires sprouting from tiered concrete domes jutted above the ramshackle border of New Petchaburi Road, and the thought of a temple’s beauty and tranquility made me yearn to find this one. Google gave me a name, Wat Phasi, and an address which I gave to one of the motorcycle trio on a morning when a thin but determined veil of smog hung over the city and the air was flat and sluggish. He looked puzzled for a minute and then corrected me. Google had given me an address that didn’t exist. Once he’d cleared up that misconception he took me on a short motorcycle ride to a corner of the city that existed out of time.
Temples in Bangkok almost all follow a set pattern of curving rooftops with eaves curling into serpentine shapes, bristling with white pillars and painted in brilliant shades of blue, red, and gold. The buildings in Wat Phasi were butter yellow with dark brown trimming. Their heavy, blocked shapes turned into graduated tiers. Carved wood rose to the peaks of their roofs which were crowned with the golden spires that had lured me here. They reminded me of the Iron Temple, Loha Prasart, in Rattanakosin, where the buildings were patterned after ancient temples in India and Sri Lanka.
The trunks of decapitated trees, massive and tall, surrounded the temple buildings. They held a wild clutter of objects that had been placed against them, small Buddha statues, wooden apsaras, clouds of plastic orchids, tiny lanterns, spirit houses, figures of lovely girls poised in the grace of classical dance, an army of fierce little figurines dressed in clothing from a past century, a scattering of brightly colored prayer flags. Gold statues of the Buddha and revered monks were scattered about with what looked like haphazard abandon and a statue of Phra Phi Ganet was prominent among them, sitting on a throne and flanked with life-size statues of white cows flanking him. He was jet black.
A school lay on one end of the grounds, with a sign saying it was bilingual--English and Thai.. Following a driveway on the other side, there was a little barnyard, with chickens, a rooster, and a roofed enclosure that held at least four white cows. A sign told visitors not to feed them rice, bread, or roti because that made them bloated and sick.
I left enchanted by this sacred and rural secret in the middle of relentless ugliness. And then I remembered what my best friend had told me about the heart of his city, “It’s not for travelers.” Wat Phasi was a refuge for people who lived and coped and struggled with Bangkok every day. To walk within it, I needed to earn it and that wasn’t going to happen in a few weeks.
At the end of my stay I went to Silom Road which been spared the blight of shopping palazzos and high-rise condos. It still had wooden shophouses and shopping centers that rose only a few stories above its sidewalks. There was even a sprinkling of street vendors and a few surviving food carts spread down a block that had once been thick with an exuberant banquet. A clump of tables near an umbrella-shaded cart made me approach with tentative optimism and there I ate one of the two meals that made me happy--gao mun gai, chicken rice with a sauce that had more flavors than I could pinpoint, eaten on the sidewalk in the company of strangers.
Then at the end of the street where Silom dissolves into a subway station, was a tiny stall festooned with signs handwritten on pieces of cardboard, both in English and in Thai. “Tough time create strong men.” “Be humble. You won’t stay fresh forever.” “The world is full of nice people. If you can’t find one, be one.”
A man wearing a face mask, his eyes smiling, stood behind a little table that was covered with metal Buddha images, amulets, tiny Phra Phi Ganets, and many little animals. Long ago I’d seen those same animals in the window of a Bangkok antique shop--opium weights--and didn’t have the money to buy them. Now, as I picked up a little brass cat, I felt that same heaviness and was instantly overjoyed. Someone had cared enough to find the molds for those weights and replicated the figures, with detail and care.
I chose one for me and several for my family, each figure carrying what I loved about this city that once was my home, where I was now a stranger.
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