lingering ideas...

Me and a friend headed towards the main river of Bangkok, the Chao Phraya crossing narrow paths around little houses made of small stone and lots of local hand crafted materials.
The river ran wild with muddy water and looked like any animal could come out of it anytime.
We hopped onto this very artesanal rusty looking boat and sailed downriver.
Our side of the river looked very identical throughout, but on the other side we could see a mystical temple resembling a pyramid surrounded by 4 smaller towers and it quickly caught our eye. It looked like a great window into thai culture and tradition.
As we missed our boat stop, we asked a local fishermen who was kind enough to allow two extra persons on his single column boat, two more than what it was prepared to, to cross the river to the other side for a handful of bahts.

We arrived then at the margin of the Temple of the Dawn. Soon enough we lost ourselves in the labyrinthic paths around the temple and were greeted by surprise by the most sincerely genuine smile from wandering buddhist monks. We also had the chance to hear the exotic sound played of a suspended gong. The temple itself astonished us by its shape, and its aura.

We overheard some synchronized chanting and we climbed up the stairs to a temple to find some monks chanting, sitting down evenly spaced in a central stage which had golden head statues. The local population sat aswell beside the stage and took turns chanting with the monks.
A considerably older monk arrived just behind us, smiled widely at us, and invitingly pointed us inside the temple, allowing us to join the locals in the traditional thai prayer. For a brief moment we forgot about our customs, and happily joined in on theirs. It was a once in a lifetime experience.

Afterwards the temple of the dawn elder monk showed us his office and traded some stories with us, and gave us 2 wristbands., colored yellow and red for good luck.

We were glad we missed the river boat stop!