Nick and I went back to Bangkok for the umpteenth time this weekend. Vientiane is a cool city and all, but I love love love Bangkok. It's got so much going on ! Nick says that he struggles with it because it's "clustered and chaotic", but that's the exact reason I love it.
When looking for cool new things to do this weekend I found the Bangkok list of "Top 10 Most Unusual Sights": http://www.bangkok.com/most-unusual-sights.htm
#1 on this list is the "Phallic Shrine", or more delicately named "Goddess Tub Tim shrine". To get there we walked from our hotel to the Chidlom area, walked past a bunch of embassies the "Swissotel Nai Lert Park", and asked the guard for directions to the shrine. He pointed around the corner of the building, and we got a bit lost and ended up in the staff cafeteria area. I had expected the shrine to be in the middle of a courtyard, but instead, it was this sketchy 50 foot area between the parking lot and the river, beside the hotel's trash disposal area.
The shrine has developed into a fertility shrine, so supposedly it is visited by couples that are trying to conceive (please note that this is NOT the case for Nick and me)
There are all these creepy ceramic children at the entrance of the shrine
There are phalluses of every color and wrapped in ribbons. Lots of penises, everywhere.
Some of the penises even had their own penises.
A lot of the penis/ phallic-shaped things are leaning up against trees.
The actual shrine (which is pretty similar to the spirit houses that are everywhere in SE Asia)
Anyway, it wasn't the most amazing temple/ shrine ever, but it was close to Central World, and the river, so it was pretty easy to make this a quick side trip. I felt kind of immature, giggling at something that obviously had religious significance for some, but there was only one other person who walked by the shrine while we were there and he was a Swissotel employee on his way to work.
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