More of a Tourist Doing Tourist Things, Tourist Town, Tourist Season: the Reclining Buddha

A teaser of the Reclining Buddha. He's giant!

The tour guide hired a few tuk-tuks and we were whisked off to the next stop on the major tourist sights to see when you're a tourist in a tourist town during tourist season who is unashamedly a tourist.

Welcome to Wat Pho.  Which is not a Faux Wat.  It's the real deal.  Let's step inside.

Wat Pho is packed to the gills with buddha statuary.

The first stop is the main stop: the Reclining Buddha.  The queue to get in, compared to the Emerald Buddha (who really is made of a jade), was relatively not a problem.

This is no "let's first see the less important attractions before we get to why we're here" tour.

You enter at the head side of the statue.  He's big.  Really, really big.

As you walk down through the temple, more and more of the buddha gets revealed.  And you actually can take photos of progressively more and more of the Reclining Buddha.

I thought this would be one wear you could not get a clear shot of the entire Reclining Buddha and, if you had good photo-editing software, you could stitch together a photo of the actual Reclining Buddha.  Nope.  No need for that.

We're almost at the end.

I will keep these cellphone chatterers in the picture for perspective on just how big the Buddha is.

And, finally, we reach the end.  The full Reclining Buddha.  Toes and all.

Even toeprints!  That, my friends, is attention to detail.  One last look:

The Buddha in statuary appears in a few different forms.  A Reclining Buddha means that the Buddha has reached the stage of enlightenment.  It's why he is able to recline.

It happened too quickly for me to get a photo, but some guy was wandering around in a Nirvana T-shirt.  Something tells me it was the grunge music nirvana and not the state of Buddhist enlightenment nirvana.  P.S.: rock band Nirvana: what was their best song.  Easy?  This one.  And it doesn't "smell" like anything.

There's more to Wat Pho than a muddy ol' river or a reclining Buddha.

Monks and stupa, for instance.

And more buddha:

You can see, just behind the buddha draped in orange, is a black buddha.  These buddhas are being refurbished.  These buddhas are all black under the skin, but then they are gilded with gold leaf to take on their final color.

Staff sleeping on the job:

Seriously.  That's why you have two people laying on the ground there.

This guy looks like he wants to attack with a kitchen utensil.

And we will conclude with prayers at a yellow-draped standing (not reclining) Buddha.  Standing upright is actually rare in Buddha.  Sitting legs folded underneath is the most common.  Reclining is fairly common.  Standing upright?  Not something the Buddha usually does.

The next stop requires a ferry-boat, not a water taxi.  There's a difference.