I am very behind on this blog at the moment, bear with, blog posts are coming.
Luang Prabang has been a definite highlight for me in Laos. The small peninsula city is stuffed full of cute French cafes; gleaming, golden temples; and bougainvillea-draped streets. At night the city streets are filled with handicraft stalls; buffets are piled high with delicious food; and you can faintly hear the sounds of pins being struck by bowling balls. More on all that later.
In amongst all these entrancing attractions and attractive excursions, one place that I visited just stood out head and shoulders above the rest; the royal temple of Wat Xieng Thong. In English, the Temple of the Golden City. Before the abolition of the Laotian monarchy in 1975, it was where Lao kings were coronated, and it remains the crown jewel of this city.
Sorry, that pun was bad, but it was too bad not to be used.
The monastery was built in 1559-1560, and much of the original structure remains, with much being restored over the last century thanks to royal patronage and more recently it’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
It is just incredible, and very, very different to any other wat I have seen in South East Asia.
There’s a theme in this temple around mosaics. They are everywhere.
Inside the sim (main sanctuary building), the artists took a break from mosaic, and decided on moody lighting and gold painting.
Across from the main sim, on the other side of the concrete courtyard, there was a building housing the royal funerary carriage. It was much too dark inside, and the carriage too large, to get a decent picture of the entirety. But I did manage a photo of the fierce creatures on the prow of the carriage.
Now, up to now, you must be thinking why this monastery is so special. Nothing so far can compete with the majesty of Bangkok’s Grand Palace, nor the self-assured elegance of the temples in Chiang Mai.
However, I may have kept the best parts of this temple till last.
First of all, behind the sim is the Sanctuary of the Reclining Buddha. The image of the buddha itself is not that impressive (in fact, I didn’t even photograph it), but the building housing it is covered in the most beautiful mosaics depicting everyday Laotian life.
If these mosaics were not enough, there was one other wall of them.
Something I have learnt in Thailand is that there’s always something on the back wall of a sim. Most of the time it is another Buddha image. But this time, it was something a little more special.
The whole temple, despite the slightly discordant artistic techniques and styles, combined into a marvellous, technicolour whole that was markedly different from any other Buddhist temple I have been to. It was not on the same scale as those in Bangkok or Chiang Mai; but it felt far more welcoming, and warm. You could almost feel the love which had gone into building, maintaining, and restoring the temple.
It was just a really special temple, which I was so glad to have seen in my short time in Laos.
In the next blog, I cover what else I saw whilst walking the old streets of Luang Prabang.
DSP
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