Friday, January 20, 2017

Sukhothai



The official alphabet of Thailand was developed in this town by the king. It has 44 letters, 22 vowels and 6 tonal sounds. We rented some really old, used bikes to ride around the Historical Park, an Unesco Heritage Site. The original casting of la Buddha was made in this temple and most other Buddhas are based on this casting. There are many monuments in the park, some complete stupas and some just their bases. The centerpiece is the triad of pine cone shaped stuapas called Prangs because they were made by Cambodians who resided here at the time they were built. The Emerald Buddha that we saw in Bangkok resided at this temple at one time.
We learned more about the differences in each Buddha we see. We looked at the hair, the lips, ears and chin shape, the hands and the stole. One Buddha we saw was standing 9 meters tall and another had a 7 headed snake rearing up over its head as a sign of protection.

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