Another little day trip we took was downtown to Bangkok to visit one of the many temples found in Thailand, Way Prayoon. This one was unique, though, both in appearance and in what we found there. Part of it was your typical Thai temple (or Wat) – ornate, big white spire, etc. Very pretty, but not different from the thousands of other temples here, really. But then there was a small section off to the side that had a pond with an odd island in the middle full of little houses – spirit houses. Most Thai homes and businesses have spirit houses in front of them – they put incense and candles and other offerings there (anything from flowers to food to a bottle of open soda, complete with a straw in it ready to drink!) The point of the spirit houses (and offerings) is to attract spirits to the little house outside the home or business instead of having them come inside, where they could cause problems for the people. This little island at Wat Prayoon had all kinds of spirit houses, little caves with gold Buddahs in them, and best yet, a ton of turtles swimming all over the place. The kids got a big kick out of buying a plate of food and feeding the turtles chunks of bananas (who knew turtles ate bananas? Not me!) off of long sticks. We also got roped into lighting incense and candles in front of a Buddah statue by some little old Thai lady who didn’t speak a lick of English but who was very insistent, none the less, that we buy the incense and light those candles!
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