About Wat Pho
It fills the hall from end to end: 46 meters long and 15 high, with a brick core, modeled plaster and gold leaf on top. There is no angle that fits it all in one photo. Walk to the feet, whose soles are divided into 108 mother-of-pearl panels with auspicious symbols, and listen for the clinking along the wall: it is coins dropping into 108 bronze bowls, an offering that helps maintain the temple.
Just south of the Grand Palace, Wat Pho holds more than a thousand Buddha images and is considered the country's first public university, because it taught religion, science and literature through murals and inscriptions, now listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World program. The traditional massage school operates on the grounds.
