Buddhist Arts

When we vis­ited Luang Pra­bang in 2002, this small town, sit­ting on the Mekong River and home to at least 34 wats, or Bud­dhist tem­ples, still felt a lit­tle undis­cov­ered. While walk­ing along the main drag, though, I some­times felt as though I was in a Euro­pean city with the French colo­nial build­ings lin­ing the […]

[Read more →]

The Peace­ful­ness Tem­ple, or Pra Tard Kong, is a recently built tem­ple just out­side of town. It has become a favorite of locals and SE Asian vis­i­tors. The day we were there they were hav­ing some kind of cer­e­mony, so we were unable to enter the tem­ple. But as you can see from the pictures, […]

[Read more →]

Here are two small wats in Luang Pra­bang. I only spent a short amount of time at each, in fact I have 2 pic­tures of each wat. Wat Pa Khe or the Monastery of the For­est of Khe Trees and Wat Paphane or Monastery of the Flame Tree For­est are both located near Mount Phousi. […]

[Read more →]

Wat Tham Phousi is located on Mount Phousi. It is an unre­mark­able wat except for the tall cupola topped with a sin­gle para­sol and sur­rounded by 4 more para­sols at its 4 cor­ners. I did not see any­thing else like this in Luang Pra­bang. Addi­tion­ally, it is built into the side of a large rock. Many […]

[Read more →]

The Royal Palace was home to the royal fam­ily until 1975 when the com­mu­nist Pathet Lao took over. The last crown prince of Laos, Savang Vatthana, and his fam­ily were removed from the palace and died about 5 years later in the hills near the Plain of Jars. It is now the National Museum where […]

[Read more →]

These two wats are sit­u­ated very close together and share the old­est arch­way in Luang Pra­bang. I show two pic­tures of it where you may won­der how on earth it is still stand­ing, which is under­stand­able con­sid­er­ing that it was built in 1504. Wat Thakmo is described in Ancient Luang Pra­bang as dis­play­ing Sin­halese influ­ence. Having […]

[Read more →]

Wat Nong Sikhun­muang is located on Kounxoa Road, in the next block from Wat Sene. The roof col­ors are vibrant yel­low and orange and the exte­rior gold dec­o­ra­tion of the gable is set against a back­drop of deep red. The wat itself is white­washed, which really sets off the deep gold framed win­dows along the sides. […]

[Read more →]

Oth­er­wise known sim­ply as Wat Mai, this is a fairly large tem­ple com­plex. The main tem­ple is unusual in that it has a five-tiered roof. Each tier is fin­ished with a naga finial and the very top tier is dec­o­rated with a 3-spire dok so faa, or metal roof dec­o­ra­tion. The low­est roof sweeps nearly […]

[Read more →]

Wat Khili is sit­u­ated oppo­site Wat Xieng Thong and next door to Wat Si Boun Houang. The first pic­ture in this set is of the 2-story white stucco French colo­nial style monks quar­ters attached to this wat. What I love most about this wat are the col­or­ful tree of life mosaics on the red front of […]

[Read more →]

While many of the wats in Luang Pra­bang were ren­o­vated in mid to late 20th cen­tury, this wat seems older because it was last ren­o­vated in 1900. It was built in the mid 18th cen­tury. The small sim has 4 columns, 2 round and 2 square, topped with lotus petal cap­i­tals sup­port­ing a low sweeping […]

[Read more →]