Thursday, April 05, 2007

From a Slate travel article on Bangkok:

Located inside the Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaeo was built as the royal temple, and with its brilliant, outlandish color scheme and oddly sized structures looks like the kind of spiritual playground Donald Trump would create if he happened to be a gay Buddhist dwarf. Speaking of gay Buddhist dwarfs, Wat Phra Kaeo houses the Emerald Buddha, Thailand's holiest icon. Made of green jade, this 18-inch statue sits atop what appears to be a vault-sized wedding cake made of gilt and gold. I'm joking, of course, about the Emerald Buddha being gay—as an enlightened being, he is free from desire for either gender, making him technically a bored bisexual—but he does possess three Liberace-fabulous outfits, which, according to custom, the king of Thailand himself personally changes at the beginning of each of Thailand's three seasons: spicy, steamed, and fried.

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