Wat Arun is better known as the Temple of Dawn. It sits on the west bank of the Chao Phraya, across the river from Wat Phrakaew and Wat Pho. So to get there you must take a short 3 baht ferry right across the busy river.
The ferry terminal is a mass of heaving, sticky people and not a place you want to spend mich time. Ferries are frequent and jam packed full which doesn’t prevent people from rushing onboard at the last minute since there’s always room for one more.
But after about four minutes dodging barges and speedboats you reach the other side and Wat Arun. Built in the 1600s, it is called the Temple of Dawn because the first morning light shines of the tallest spire with a pearly shiny reflection.
The full name is Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan. A side note on Thai: it is a completely impenetrable language. For example. in Thai there are no spaces between words, only sentences. To complicate things even more it is a tonal language, so two words spelled the same way are pronounced differently depending on context and not at all how they look in Roman lettering (let alone in Thai lettering!).
Wat Arun was a little bit of a let down after the first two, and given the effort to get to it we had hoped for more. Still beautiful nevertheless.
Mid-distance it looks like a very ornate layer cake.
Up close you get to see all the carvings and additions that give it that appearance and also,the illumination in the morning light.
Outside Wat Arun you can have a little fun by renting a traditional Thai costume such as this lady did,
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and by the way, we did climb up to first level and turned around and came back down. Scary!!!
The neat thing about it though is they used broken ceramic pieces from that era to glam it up. I personally loved it and it’s just beautiful at sunset.
No, thank you, on the stairs and where’s the picture of you and Jeff in a costume?!
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