This isn't your regular wat picture I suppose, but I just had to put up a picture of these felines. They were almost all over the place at Wat Pracacinaram.
This is my first ever wat. Ever. Yaay!
I had no preconceived idea about what a wat should look like and I was blown away by what seems to be a wonderful balance of quaintness and over-the-topness, not at just this wat but at all the wats we saw that day.
Well, except for the last one we saw (Wat Chonprachumthat). That I'll save for another write-up. :)
There was on-going construction at the time of our visit (that was November 2009). I guess they would have finished by now. The construction, however, in no way dampened our visit.
I also first learned the word 'bot'. One of the men said we could enter the 'bot' as it was unlocked. I had no idea what he meant. I thought he mispronounced 'boat'! Haha, stupid me. And travel buddy said, no he said wat. I kept my peace. I thought I could differentiate the sound of 'b' and 'v'. Still, one never can tell.
Anyway, afterwards, back at our room in Kota Bharu, I googled 'bot' and found out it to be the prayer house, or I just googled it again, it defines a 'bot' as the finest building in a Thai Buddhist monastery. Talk about wow.
This picture does NOT do it justice tho :(
Anyway, we didn't enter this fine looking building since we weren't sure that we could. Lesson of the day; in case of ignorance.. ASK.
It also happened to be something like all souls day or something. There were Buddhist devotees placing offers and burning paper money. We tried not to be too intrusive and kept out of the way. Good thing they were quite nice about us (me rather) taking their pictures :)
I think no matter how good a picture is, it would never do justice to the subject matter...nothing beats live views and living the moment kan dear...;P
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