See Wat Pho and Wat Arun, on either bank of the Chao Phraya

Wat Pho and Wat Arun face each other across the Chao Phraya in Bangkok: Wat Pho on the east bank, beside the Grand Palace, and Wat Arun on the Thonburi side. Both are royal temples older than the city itself, and a short ferry crossing joins them, so they make one visit of a morning or an afternoon.

Wat Pho, the temple as a school

Wat Pho stood here as an older monastery of the Ayutthaya period, Wat Phodharam, before King Rama I had it restored from 1788, soon after he founded Bangkok. His ashes lie beneath the principal Buddha image in the ordination hall. The temple covers about twenty acres, and its four great chedis honour the first four kings of the Chakri dynasty.

Its best-known image came later. In 1832 Rama III built the Reclining Buddha and the hall that houses it: the figure is 46 metres long and 15 metres high, gilded, and the soles of its feet are inlaid with mother-of-pearl in 108 panels of auspicious symbols. Rama III also turned the temple into a place of public learning. Between 1831 and 1841 he and Thai scholars set up 1,431 stone inscriptions on religious and secular subjects, among them texts and drawings on massage, and UNESCO added them to its Memory of the World register in 2011.

That teaching continues. Wat Pho runs a school of traditional Thai medicine and massage inside the temple grounds, and a massage there is part of many visits.

Wat Arun, across the river

A temple stood on the west bank before the reign of King Narai in the seventeenth century. When King Taksin made Thonburi his capital, he renamed it Wat Chaeng, and it held the Emerald Buddha until the image was moved to Wat Phra Kaew in 1785. Rama II restored the temple and planned a much taller central prang, and the work was carried out under Rama III; the main prang was finished in 1851. The name comes from Aruna, the Hindu god of the dawn.

The prang is covered in fragments of coloured porcelain and seashells, much of it brought as ballast on boats from China, and in the early morning its surface takes on a pearly sheen.

Good to know

Wat Pho is open daily from 8:00 to 19:30, with an entrance fee of 300 baht for adults; children under 120 centimetres enter free. The massage school keeps the same hours. Wat Arun charges a separate entrance fee. Both are active temples: dress modestly, with trousers rather than shorts, take off your shoes before entering the halls, and never step on or climb a Buddha image. Women should not touch monks.

Sources: Wat Pho; Wat Pho, history; UNESCO Memory of the World; Tourism Authority of Thailand, via Airports of Thailand; Wikipedia, Wat Arun; Wikipedia, Wat Pho.