A land of Buddhas

95% of Thais are Buddhists and there are statues of Buddha everywhere. On our first day in Bangkok, the Royal Palace was our first priority, but there were other interesting sights of day to day life around every corner and each of these were close to an image of buddha. Pé, our guide, had a different superlative for the majority of them and it would have been easy to have let her statistics wash over the top of us. This buddha compelled our attention though. The Temple of Wat Taimit houses "the world's largest massive gold seated Buddha measuring nearly five metres in height and weighing five and a half tons"  It is difficult not to be impressed when you get so close to 5500Kg of 22 carat gold housed in a simple wooden unguarded pagoda. It was cast, probably in India,  around 1403, but was covered in plaster was a security measure when the country was attacked and and overrun by the Burmese in the 18th century. It lay undiscovered in the ruins of its original temple in Ayutthaya till 1801 when it was moved to Bangkok. It was only discovered to be solid gold in 1955 when it was dropped accidentally whilst being moved for temple renovation. It is, in retrospect, not surprising that the ropes holding it broke under the unexpected weight.
Second impressions of the city include heat, bustle, pushy Chinese tourist everywhere, Buddhist shrines everywhere, delicate, aromatic, mildly spicy  food as delicious as we had hoped it would be, and hardly a green Thai curry to be seen.