Oct 25, 2008 Sat

09:20:32 just woke up, alarm clock not working

It is a china town temple. Not particularly interesting. Nothing special.

A simple shrine. Didn't go inside.

The Bangkok Metro is easy enough for tourists. Most machines have an English menu. The mouse pointer when using the English menu is not very accurate. You have to operate it like a computer, drag the arrow to the station you want to go to and then press enter. I'm not sure if it's just that individual machine.

You will get a magnetic coin. Use the coin on the entrance (no need to insert it). Only when you exit the station, you insert the coin at the exit.

When I came here, I half expected to see a statue of a 3 headed Elephant. For Erawan is the Thai word of Airavata, the Three Headed Elephant, mount of Indra who is the God of the gods. So I was quite baffling when I saw the four-faced statue of Brahma. I'm not sure why they didn't call this the Brahma temple. (Erawan was born after Brahma cast a hymn on the half-shell of Garuda, but that was the only relation I knew between them)

And even stranger, I had been here before. I remembered this place from my last visit to Thailand (which was millennium before).

But something had changed, the statue was different. In 2006, in the middle of the night, the statue of Brahma was completely destroyed by a man with mental illness. Later the man was beaten to death by the bystanders (including two street-sweepers). It was a bizarre incident. The one in this photo is the restored statue.

It is inside Central World.
I ordered a Turnip pancake 70b, some veggie dumpling 50b (which turned out to be not purely veggie), an olive fried rice 80b (which unfortunately, also polluted with meat), and sprite for 25b.

great vegetarian options

Took the subway home