On one of the days, I hopped on my motorbike and made the drive to see the Big Buddha. By the way, renting a motorbike is by far the easiest and cheapest (about $6 a day) way to get around the island.
The Big Buddha is a statue and active Buddhist temple. For some background, Thailand is predominantly Buddhist. You can see little shrines and offerings in front of many businesses. Often it is just a few food items and some incense, but some places have more intricate shrines. Even the bars and clubs often have these. It was interesting to see what appeared to be shots of alcohol next to some incense in front of a bar.
Well, I zipped down to Bang Rak (I was staying in Chaweng on a different part of the island) to check out the Big Buddha. I first saw the statue from a pier in Bang Rak:
I then stopped on the bridge to the island to check it out again:
It was even more impressive as I got closer:
The temple also had a lot of other interesting art:
Finally, here's the view from the statue:
Wow! I hope I can see that some day. I'm a big fan of Buddhist philosophy. You might check into it some day if you're not already familiar with it.
ReplyDeleteNick, thanks for posting all these pictures. You just brought some sunshine to the freezing Midwest day! Miss you. :-)
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