The Grand Palace

This guide to the Grand Palace in Bangkok traces how a statue barely knee-height came to sit at the center of Thai royal power, from a Siamese general's conquest of Laos in 1779 to King Rama I's founding of the palace on stone salvaged from the ruins of Ayutthaya. You'll hear about the ritual only the king may perform three times a year, and the string of kingdoms that fought to possess the same small figure. Listen with the mosaic-covered temple walls of the courtyard in view.