His otherwise forgettable 1936 travel book Bali and Angkor is remarkable for his displeasure with Thailand. "It is very difficult to take Bangkok quite seriously; it is the most hokum place I have ever seen, never having been to California," Gorer wrote. Prompting his sneers was Thai traditional temple architecture, which he thought "the same as Cambodian, but with knobs on -- lots of knobs."

It seemed to Gorer that "wherever a bit of decoration or twirly-whirly can be fixed with some possibility of its staying put it is stuck on." The elaborate adornment of Bangkok's Wat Arun finally proved too much. Gorer repeats a guidebook suggestion that the temple is best seen for a distance and adds, "Yes, indeed. You can't be too far away from these buildings to get the best effect."

On this showing Gorer would clearly have a thing or two to tell St Peter about Heaven's Gate. His criticisms are misplaced, however, and he uses a mundane yardstick for assessing what is the truly fabulous. Ironically it was a writer of more famous acerbity, Somerset Maugham, who perceived and accepted the real wonder of the Thai temple.

"They are unlike anything in the world, so that you are taken aback, and you cannot fit them into a scheme of the things you know," he wrote in 1930. "It makes you laugh with delight to think that anything so fantastic could exist on this sombre earth. They are gorgeous; they glitter with gold and whitewash, yet are not garish; against that vivid sky, in that dazzling sunlight, they hold their own, defying the brilliancy of nature and supplementing it with the ingenuity and playful boldness of man."

Maugham captures the delight that nearly all visitors to Bangkok find in the city's temples. They are rightly at the top of anyone's sightseeing list. The immediate attraction lies, as Maugham so vividly portrays, in their fabulous appearance, their exotic architecture, their wealth of decorative detail.

Yet there is more than just the initial visual impact, and a closer look at Buddhist temples opens up a whole world of understanding about Thai society and its art and culture.

Buddhism, along with the tradition of monarchy, underpins the nation's entire cultural and social fabric. It is the religion under which the people (originally animists) were first united, and it has remained a vital and visible force in daily life throughout the more than 700 years of Thai history. Today it is as strong as ever, practised and professed by more than nine-tenths of the population.

Quintessential to the religion is the monkhood. Central to Buddhist practice is the concept of making merit and the supreme form of merit, for men at least, is to become, if only temporarily, a monk. Even in modern Thailand most young men will still comply with this custom, becoming ordained and entering a monastery for a period of perhaps one, two or three months.

Women and the population at large make important merit by giving daily food offerings to monks. At any one time, present-day Thailand supports a religious community of some 250,000 monks who reside at an estimated 27,000 temples throughout the country.

The concept of merit-making and the various ways in which it may be achieved, as well as the deeper meaning and practice of Buddhism and its attendant monkhood, need not concern us here. What is important to grasp for an appreciation of the Thai temple is the integral role of the religious community and hence the material structure which supports it.
The word "temple" is largely unsatisfactory as a translation of the Thai word wat. It implies a single structure, as is the case with a Christian church, but this is not so with a Buddhist wat. Besides monks' residential quarters which are commonly, though not always, found at a wat, a Thai temple complex comprises several distinct religious buildings.

The principal structure is the bot, the most sacred part of the temple and the place where ordination ceremonies are conducted. The building is identified by eight boundary stones, called sima, placed outside at the four corners and the four cardinal points. More.