At the top, as the sweat drips from your forehead in Bangkok’s shirt-drenching humidity and searing heat, you feel the fruits of your labor were very much worth it. Greeting you is an open-air rooftop courtyard offering panoramic views of Bangkok as far as the vision stretches. At the center of the rooftop is a classic Thai Buddhist stupa.

Look in one direction and your eyes are drawn to the high-rise office buildings, condos, and shopping malls that dot the Sukhumvit and Silom areas of modern Bangkok. Gaze in another direction and you get a unique view of Bangkok’s most beautiful temples, lining up along the Chao Phraya River; from the Grand Palace to Wat Arun.

Start to examine what you see more carefully, and you’ll notice the oft-missed details of Bangkok to the casual visitor; its slums and canals teeming with life, and its abandoned buildings, all of which contribute in their own way to Bangkok’s gritty charm.

It’s natural to feel a wave of gratitude when you climb to the top of an underrated gem like Wat Saket. This gratitude stems from having the freedom to explore one of the planet’s great cities.

It’s a feeling of gratitude that’s particularly pertinent at a time in which the citizens of another huge city (Wuhan) are on lockdown due to the Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) epidemic. Some Wuhan residents have developed such cabin fever that they’ve taken to running entire marathons around their living rooms.

The Vultures of Bangkok

As you descend from atop Wat Saket, this time via a different flight of 300 steps, you come to one of Bangkok’s most eerie monuments. Greeting you are statues of four Thai people looking on with almost resigned expressions as huge vultures feast on a corpse.

Wondering what the fresh hell this monument depicts, you naturally read the description. In the late 19th century, circa 1890, a devastating cholera outbreak spread throughout Southeast Asia, reaching Bangkok via Penang in Malaysia.

Cholera is a relatively mild illness if treated early, although it was often fatal if you contracted it back in those days of relatively primitive healthcare. In Bangkok, thousands of people died, and many of their bodies were brought to Wat Saket for cremation.

The pace of deaths was too fast for the temple to cope with, and dead bodies were often left outside to decay. This is where the vultures enter the story. Historical records around the time detail huge swathes of vultures perched along the temple’s winding stairs, lunching on the dead with reckless abandon.

A Sense of Perspective

It would be hyperbole to assume a similar scenario will happen with the current coronavirus outbreak. Modern containment measures are excellent and healthcare authorities are much better equipped to cope with the worst outcomes.

Still, Bangkok’s eeriest monument gives passers-by a real sense of perspective about the havoc that epidemics can cause and the utter helplessness of humans when sh*t really hits the fan.

It also reinforces the gratitude I mentioned earlier; anyone reading this article can consider themselves charmed to live in an era of scientific progress such that even when outbreaks of new illnesses occur, we are typically spared from such horrible sights.

The post This Eerie Bangkok Monument is a Stark Reminder of Past Epidemics appeared first on Cerebrotonic.