Buying Coffins

My girlfriend and I have a tradition that we do twice a year on our birthdays. Each year in February and August, we will go down to Yaowarat Road (Bangkok's Chinatown) to eat, make merit, and visit the grand Chinese temple, Wat Mangkorn.

volunteers collecting our donation at the temple

First, we stopped at the royal temple Wat Hua Lampong to make merit. This temple has a charity organization where people can make donations to buy coffins for poor and homeless people in Thailand who died without any family. The organization takes care of their funerals. It sounds a bi morbid, but it's an important charity to support.

merit making

We made our donation (in the names of ourselves and our families), and were given a pink slip of paper and a white and orange certificate.

coffins for donating

The pink paper was pasted onto one of the big, wooden coffins at the temple using an old-fashioned glue made out of sticky rice flour and water. 

people can help pay for coffins

After that, we took our certificate to the shrine hall, where statues of various Buddhas, Chinese gods, and Taoist immortals were enshrined. It's always busy at this temple. It's a popular place for people to "make merit", or collect good karma through good deeds and charity.

at the temple's shrine

We took the certificate into the shrine hall, and burnt it from one of the oil lanterns. As the certificate turned to ash in a big metal bowl, the smoke floated away, carrying our good wishes for our families up to Heaven.

burning the certificate

The MRT (subway) has recently opened a new expansion that brings the train into Chinatown and the city's Old Town. There are currently five new stations, each one designed beautifully to reflect the neighborhood it is in. This was my first time visiting the new extensions! We took the train one stop to the brand-new Wat Mangkorn Station, in Chinatown. Wat Mangkorn Station is designed to represent Chinatown, and is decorated in red and gold Chinese motifs with lots and lots of dragons.

Wat Magkorn Station

In the past, you had to walk a ways to get to Chinatown, and the Grand Palace was very difficult to reach (you had to take either a bus or a boat). The new MRT is going to be a great help in getting around Bangkok. In a few weeks, I hope to make a day of it and visit each new stop, getting out and taking pictures of the beautiful stations. Stay tuned!

the new Chinatown train station

Wat Mangkorn is the most famous Chinese temple in the city. I like visiting there because it is so different from any other Thai temple. It's always bustling and busy with people praying, old Chinese-Thais singing Buddhist chants, monks, merit-makers, tourists, and more.

Wat Mangkorn

Now that Chinatown is easier to get to, maybe I'll try making more of an effort to head out to the Old Town more often. There's a lot to see in Old Bangkok, and I haven't been that way very frequently. I like visiting Yaowarat Road especially, because it feels like going back in time. There are no skyscrapers there, just century-old pharmacies, mom and pop shops, and shop houses. It's loud, chaotic, and has lots of amazing smells from local cooking. It's a nice place to spend time exploring.

inside the temple