golden buddha: wat traimit

School was out on Wednesday for the Queen's birthday, so Mariela and I decided to make an excursion to the famed Golden Buddha. It's three meters tall and made from solid gold.

There weren't any convenient buses, so we took a taxi. The driver wanted to use the expressway because of a traffic jam. The toll for the expressway was 45B, and we still hit a little traffic there because people were trying to get to the Grand Palace. 110B later, we were there.

We walked up to a magnificent, but closed, gold and white temple. Adjacent to it was a somewhat less impressive temple with chipping, faded paint. We took off our shoes and went inside.

There was a large golden Buddha statue at the front of the room. It looked to be about three meters high. We sat down and looked around. The walls were unadorned, unlike other wats we'd visited. The red carpet covering the floor was worn and shabby. It seemed an unlikely home for one of the three most important Buddha statues in Bangkok.

Mariela asked me how many carats I thought the Buddha might be. Then we got into a conversation about the difference in carats. We watched a monk perform a ceremony with some worshipers. He tied a string around each person's wrist and flung holy water on them. Drops flicked on us, too.

We got up to leave, went outside, and started perusing our map to figure out where the nearest Metro stop was when a tuk-tuk driver sidled up to us. We started talking about the Golden Buddha and he pointed at the pretty, new, white and gold wat and said, "Oh, no, it's up there. But it's closed until next month."

So that answered Mariela's question: The statue we saw was made from 0 carat gold...

We were somewhat annoyed that we'd paid all that money for the taxi ride and hadn't even seen the Golden Buddha. The tuk-tuk driver offered to give us a ride for 20 baht to our next destination.

Then he told us we had to made a stop at his sponsor's store. This is a common tourist trap, but usually the tourists don't find out they're making a stop until they're already on the road. The driver stops off at a store and tries to get you to buy something, because he'll receive a commission from the store owner.

We started to tell him, "No, thanks," but he told us we could just go in the store for ten minutes, look around, and leave. We didn't have to buy anything. And he'd lower our fare to ten baht. We said OK. It was daytime, after all. What could happen?

He told us the store shirts. We expected a souvenir shop, but he pulled over in front of a tailor, got out, and gestured for us to go inside.

I had to wonder - does that technique really work? Do people just decide to go have some tailored clothes made on a whim? I tend to think not.

Anyway, we looked, left, and got to our destination with no problems.

I'm calling this one a 0% because we didn't see the Buddha we came for, and we paid a lot to get there. Maybe next month.