A dazzle of gold and a blaze of colours _ that's your first impression of the Grand Palace as you come down the avenue of ugly dull buildings. It is a splendid mass of pagodas, towers, halls and chapels with triple roofs ending in flourishes of serpents' tails. The temple bells glint from the eaves below roofs covered with blue and orange, green and yellow tiles. The buildings look like blown up toys. The black spires seem remote and unreal as fairy tales and dreams. High white walls surround the city for it is indeed a little city of its own.
"When I was about nine years old I was taken to the cremation of the Crown Prince and there I saw Princess Suddhadibya, who was very beautiful, and I developed a crush on her. She was one of the King's daughters and I was determined to go and live with her but I didn't until three years later after my tonsure ceremony. This is the cutting of the topknot at the age of puberty for boys and girls. When children were small their heads were shaved and only a little tuft of hair was left on top and tied into a knot and fixed with a pretty pin. The topknot was cut when the child was 11 or 12.