The Erawan Shrine
The Thai government put up this shrine in 1956 because a hotel it was building kept killing workers, and an astrologer traced the trouble to a foundation stone laid on the wrong date. The hotel is gone. The shrine is still there between the malls, and petitioners whose wishes were granted pay the resident troupe to dance their thanks for them.
Field Guide Entry
Why it exists
Construction of the state-owned Erawan Hotel went badly from the start: injuries, deaths among the workers, and a shipment of Italian marble lost at sea. An astrologer consulted about it concluded that the foundation stone had been laid on an inauspicious date and that the site needed a shrine to Thao Maha Phrom, the Thai form of Brahma, to settle what had been disturbed. The shrine was installed in 1956 and the hotel opened.
The hotel was demolished in the 1980s and replaced by the Grand Hyatt Erawan. The shrine stayed exactly where it was, on the corner, and the traffic of the Ratchaprasong intersection now runs around it on all sides.
The transaction
The practice here is precise. A petitioner asks for something and promises a payment on delivery: a number of garlands, a set of wooden elephants, or a performance. When the thing is granted, they return and pay. The dancers and musicians seated at the side are hired by the petitioner, by the song, and dance facing the image on that person's behalf while they kneel behind.
It runs all day, from before work until late at night, in the middle of the busiest shopping district in Bangkok.
What has happened to it
In 2006 a man later judged to be mentally unstable attacked the Brahma image with a hammer and destroyed it. He was beaten to death on the spot by bystanders. The image was rebuilt using fragments of the original and restored within months.
On August 17, 2015, a bomb left at the shrine killed 20 people and injured more than a hundred, most of them worshippers and passers-by. It reopened two days later. The offerings, the dancers, and the crowds returned with it.
What it says about the city
An office worker stops on the way home, buys marigolds and incense from the stall at the gate, kneels for two minutes in the noise, and goes. The shrine was built by a government to fix a construction problem, and it has outlived the building, the attacks, and most of the people who remember why it went up.
Visiting Information
Open daily from about 6am to 11pm and free to enter, with incense, candles, and garlands sold at stalls around the perimeter for a small amount, and the dance troupe hired through the shrine office rather than directly.
The etiquette is straightforward: shoes stay on outside the inner area, shoulders and knees covered is the respectful default, do not point your feet at the image, and stand clear of people kneeling. Photographing the shrine and the dancers is normal, photographing a person mid-prayer up close is not.
It sits at the Ratchaprasong intersection, directly under the BTS Skywalk between Chit Lom and Siam stations, which is the easiest way in and gives the view down onto the shrine that most photographs are taken from. Evenings are the busiest and the most atmospheric.
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