Moment of enlightenment

I read that statues of the reclining Buddha depict him at the moment of his enlightenment. This, the famous reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, is possibly the most beautiful Buddha in all of Thailand - and that is saying something.

When I visited Wat Pho, I was still in that new-to-Thailand state of excitement everytime I saw an orange-robed monk (you do see quite a few of them here, so it wears off a little). So I was especially pleased to see several young monks in their orange robes and their orange shoulder bags, posing in turn for digital camera photos at Buddha's feet! (The surprise wears off at that too, after your thousandth glimpse of a monk on a mobile phone, or of very young boy monks in internet cafes with enormous headphones on.)

As if the giant golden Buddha were not enough, the walls of the temple are also covered in intricate paintings telling legends (jataka? but I thought I saw Ramayana-inspired paintings). And in the wider temple complex there are some beautiful mosaic-covered chedis (stupas), which I didn't see anywhere else.

It's not possible to convey the immensity and loveliness of Wat Pho or of this Buddha in a single photograph - just go, go, go see for yourselves.