WAT TRAIMIT AND THE BUDDHA'S MYSTERY IN SOLID GOLD...

A small temple which from the outside presents no extraordinary peculiarities and which, if we do not know what is inside does not arouse especially the curiosity of the tourist.


First you have to know the story that is for the least surprising.
It all began around 1930 when it was decided to develop the banks of the Chao Phraya River.
In the Chinatown there was an old temple abandoned for a long time and no one was going any more.
It was decided to destroy the temple but was a problem because it contained a large statue of Buddha in gilded stucco. It was a problem because in Thailand all the statues of Buddha are venerated and we can not so easily destroy them.

Faced with this problem we decided of course not to destroy the statue but to move it in a temple located in the vicinity, Wat Traimit in the Chinatown.
The problem was that the temple did not have a building large enough to receive the statue and it was decided to leave it outside, loosely sheltered under a sheet metal roof where it remained for some twenty years.

In 1955 it was decided to build a new building and decided to put the statue there.
So we took a lot of precautions when moving the statue so as not to damage it in stucco.
The monks pray a lot and there was a great ceremony during the displacement. Despite all this one of the crane's cables broke and the statue dropped heavily in the mud. This episode was considered undeniably a bad omen and everyone, monks and workers abandoned the statue to its sad fate.

At the same time or almost a very large storm fell on the city which had to face huge waterspouts of water, the bad omen thus confirmed itself.

The statue, once past the storm was covered in mud and the next day a head of the temple took the care to clean it when he suddenly saw a crack (due to the fall of the statue and the water poured on it) which allowed to appear gold metal.
We began to look in more detail and it was discovered that the stucco was only a cover and that the statue was actually solid gold.

The news spread like wildfire all over the country and the quiet little temple Wat Traimit quickly became famous and become one of the most visited temples of the country and world famous.


No one knows the origin of the statue, but it is assumed that it originated in Ayutthaya before it was moved to Bangkok. It is widely accepted that during the Burmese invasions and to prevent the statue from being stolen, it was covered with stucco by the monks so as not to arouse the greed of the invaders.

The secret was never revealed because during the Burmese invasions all those who knew the secret were massacred.

It is known with certainty that the time is that of the Ayutthaya style (1238 to 1370) by the flame above the head symbolising the spiritual energy.

In contemplating this marvel we are fully aware that gold is eternal because its magnificence has not been altered by the centuries but the mystery remains whole with regard to the origin of this masterpiece of 5.5 tons of solid gold which makes it the biggest Gold statue of the world…


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