If you head east down Sukhumvit (from the Erawan Shrine) and make a left turn on Wireless you will be on your way to finding one of Bangkok’s most obscure places of worship – Chao Mae Tuptim (also known as the Goddess Tuptin Shrine). This one is pretty hard to find, unless someone tells you where it is. It is located behind the Nai Lert Park Hotel and backs up to Khlong Saen Saep and I found it by going through the underground car park and coming out the other side (if you get to Soi Somkhit running next to Central Chidlom, then you know you’ve gone too far).
The Goddess Tuptim Shrine is a fertility shrine (as if Bangkok needed another place celebrating fertility) built by the man who also constructed the hotel, millionaire Nai Lert, to honor Chao Mae Tuptim, a female deity who supposedly lives inside a Sai (or Ficus) tree on the site. If you look at the interior of the spirit house at the Shrine, you can see a small image of Chao Mae Tuptim.
Originally, people brought food items, white jasmine flowers, lotus buds and incense sticks to the Shrine to honor the deity, but over the years those gifts were replace by wooden and stone phallic symbols of various sizes.
Some of them will tower over you and many are painted in bright colors.
Surrounding the wooden phalluses, are various small statues of elephants, horses, Thai dancers, monks and regular people.
I don't really believe in fertility shrines and that kind of stuff, but if you live in Bangkok and are having trouble conceiving a child, then I guess it wouldn't hurt to pay a visit to Chao Mae Tuptim and pray for a higher sperm count or something like that.
1 comment:
Geez Matt,
I think we'll know what is to blame if you both end up having another kid!!!
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