We left this temple without many regrets, for it didn’t seem lovely to us, and we didn’t really understand the significance of it. Then we went over to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and that was beautiful. When the heavy, studded, mother-of-pearl doors were opened and the great wooden shutters swung back, we saw in the half dark enthroned before us and high above our heads, the figure of a great Golden Buddha sitting in the Lotus position. Facing him on little wooden pyramids sat other gold figures, worshipping him. Before the altar of dark carved wood, which was covered in gold and silver ornaments and vessels, stretched an immense deep-red carpet, raised on a dais just off the floor, presumably a soft place for the worshippers to repose and pray.

The roof of the temple was high and hung with massive, spearshaped candelabra. Sunken pillars in the walls glittered with cut glass and stretched up into the square, dark vault of the roof. Every corner of the temple was musky with incense of innumerable joss-sticks. But the whole building was dominated by the huge, golden figure in the centre, and the golden ornaments and the rich red carpet gave a feeling of benevolent and generous warmth. The stone temple floor was scrupulously clean and the flags were smooth and polished from the bare feet of centuries of worshippers. As we descended the steps once more while the priest gave orders for the doors to be closed again, we felt deeply satisfied, and if our plane had gone without us, well, we’d go the next day.

The priest accompanied us to the gate, and the Dane handed a child a note for the temple’s upkeep and expenses, for the priests themselves may not touch money. We raised our hands, palms together, to our breasts and bowed our thanks.

We then paid a visit to a silversmith’s and bought a few pleasant things to remember Thailand by. Some bought silver cufflinks, engraved in silver and black, and I bought a delicate silver bowl of the type I had admired in Sowana’s house, where I had seen two of them on a dark wood table, filled with water and with rose petals floating on the water’s surface. The workmanship was simple and the silver was fine and light; the craftsman made one bowl in two days.

Then we went back to the Engineering Office of our Danish friend and drank iced whiskey there with his partner. He gave us his address and a notebook each, and finally sent one of his men to drive us back to camp. It had been a thoroughly fortunate morning.