Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
there is a small and pretty garden ringed all the way round by a handsome wrought-iron
fence painted in fire-engine red.
Miniature mansions for the departed, set into the candle-wax mountain at Wat Prayoon.
Take a closer look at this fence, and it is seen to be fashioned in the shape of lances and
arrows and that its arched sections bristle with axes and swords. The fence was ordered
from Britain in the time of Rama
III
, the payment being in sugar cane equal to the weight
of the fence, and it was originally for part of the Grand Palace. The king, however, de-
cided he didn't want it. That left the minister of the treasury, Dit Bunnag, with an awful
lot of fence. He was, however, building a temple on land he had previously used as a cof-
fee plantation, and when Wat Prayoon was completed a home was found for the fencing.
There was so much of the stuff that it was used to enclose the entire compound, and the
locals were quick to dub the temple Wat Rua Lek, or Iron Fence Temple. When the Me-
morial Bridge was built a slip road was cut through the compound and this distinctly un-
Buddhist design was partly replaced with a less militant fence for the temple entrance, al-
though there is a remnant leading from the gateway to the pagoda, an enormous white
structure that towers 61 metres (200 ft) and forms a clearly visible landmark from the op-
posite side of the river. Designed in the shape of a bell, Wat Prayoon's pagoda was the first
in Bangkok to be built in Sri Lankan style. The interior fencing divides the temple grounds
into two distinct halves. The buildings on the south side are all in traditional Thai style.
In the ordination hall can be found a 5.79 metre (19 ft) tall Buddha image named Phra
Buddha Nak, which was brought to Wat Prayoon from a temple in Sukhothai in 1831, and
which is one of a pair, the other being in Wat Suthat Thepwararam on the other side of the
river. The buildings on the north side of the iron fence are mostly in Western architectural
styles, including a single-storey structure with beautiful stained-glass windows that was
built in 1885 as a gathering place for members of the Bunnag family. Monks and novices
also used the building for studying the Dharma, but in 1916 the Thammakan Ministry,
the forerunner of the Ministry of Education, changed it into a public reading room, and it
thereby became the first public library in Thailand.
