Hundreds of statues of Buddha can be found in Bangkok’s Grand Palace.

Walking through this area within the Bangkok Grand Palace, you are surrounded on three sides by hundreds of statues of Buddha. Wanting to take a photo which showed them all off proved difficult so I decided to concentrate on just one group.

Other challenges posed include the height (they are almost a foot higher than I’d like) and that they are behind glass. To try and convey the depth and the repetition I focused on the nearest Buddha’s hand, but did not include the rest of that statue in this shot. This grouped them all closer together to increase the feeling of depth. I did have another with the first Buddha in frame, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as this shot.

It seems that one of my “trademarks” is to have a strong focal point close to the camera; further away being out-of-focus and often the actual subject of the photo. Possibly a little more depth of field could have worked here, bringing the first two or three Buddha statues in sharp focus, but I’m still happy with the end result.

The ferris wheel at Tibidabo theme park, Barcelona.

At the top of a mountain in Barcelona sits a church and a theme park — Tibidabo. We’d not planned to visit but overheard a few others discussing the place after they’d been there a previous day. We decided to head up on a whim and after walking to a bus stop we waited for the bus to arrive.

A bus pulled up to another stop and we realised we — along with several others — were waiting at the wrong stop. We finished our icy poles and climbed aboard.

After we disembarked from the bus, we still required a long and steep funicular ride. It offered some good views and when we arrived at the park, realised it was about to close in only 45 or so minutes. Since entry is free it wasn’t a big deal. Some of the rides go out over the mountain so you have a large drop below but we didn’t bother going on any of the rides.

Though the park is in a much more interesting location, the size reminded me of Luna Park.

A statue of Saint Michael stands in Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome.

Legend holds that Saint Michael appeared atop Castel Sant’Angelo to herald the end of a massive plague that swept through Rome in 500AD. This marble statue was placed at the top of the castle in 1500AD but two-hundred years layer replaced by a bronze statue. The bronze statue still stands above the castle, but I prefer this one. It’s more of a classical sculpture and I love the bronze wings too.

The castle supposedly had a tunnel connecting it directly to Saint Peter’s church, which is now in the Vatican City and the castle was used by Popes to hide from attacks and city sieges.

In the left hand (the one visible in this shot), the statue originally held a sword, which was sheathed to herald the end of the plague. I assume it was bronze but there’s not much info that I’ve found so far.

Day Forty-Nine
Bangkok
25 September 2007 22:05

Today was, sadly, the last day of our holiday, not including travel.  We went on another tour, which headed out early to see Thai temples and the Grand Palace.

We first saw the gold Buddha, which is a large, solid gold, 5 ton Buddha statue.  People were crammed into a tiny room just to see or pray to it.

The guide then ushered us onto the Wat Pho temple.  Here, there is a 46 metre long reclining statue, covered this time in gold leaf.  Even though the first one is impressive I liked this one better due to it’s immense size.

Next, after yet another bus ride, was the Grand Palace.  I did not realise how young the country is, so even though temples are made to look old there is a lot of concrete around making it all seem rather new. Here, we saw the Jade Buddha.  A single piece of jade, it’s still small but nonetheless very nice.  Strangely, you can’t take photos inside but if you go out of the room you can easily take photos through the window.

It’s like this in other rooms, some you can take photos, some you can’t.  We saw the throne room, coronation room and the King’s private temples.  Some of them, anyway.

As we left the Palace, we were faced with a wall of people forcing souvenirs onto us.  One guy in the tour group had ten or so chasing him.

Finally, for some reason, we went to a gem “factory” and what can only be described as the dodgiest “video” I’ve ever seen.  Six slide projectors worked in unison to flash images trying to be a video.  Hilarious.

Exiting the theatre a horde of workers clung onto each person, couple or group and led them through a small workshop to a massive salesroom.  Most of the stuff was more than we were willing to spend — and not really to our tastes — so Justine bought some earrings.

An hour or so later and our mini van bus thing got us to our hotel.  We both had a Thai massage (about $20 for both, for an hour!) which involves a lot of stretching and prodding as well as massage.

After the massage we took a tuk tuk to the “sky train” and caught it to a huge shopping centre.  Prices were the same as at home; we decided to head back but first checked out another shopping centre.  This one had knockoffs of everything at extremely low prices.  DVDs, clothes, luggage, all fake, all cheap.  I looked around, while Justine had a pedicure, and we headed back without buying much.

A taxi driver tried to charge 500 baht ($22ish) for a very short ride but we managed to get it for 140 baht in the end.