Buddha Park is also known as Xiang Khan, it means “Spirit City”. There are no traditional Buddha statues. Built by Luang Pu, who styled the park in Buddhist and Hindu mythology erected statues built by amateurs to showcase that mythology. The statues are bizarre and cool at the same timeand each tells a story. As it was my last morning in Vientiane and we needed to check out of the hotel, we did not spend time to do the audio tour. During unrest during the revolution in Laos in 1975, he fled the city into Thailand (Nong Khai) which is less than 1 kn away and built a similar park there. You can see the Laos park from the highest structure in the park in Thailand.
We took the #14 bus for the 45 minute ride there. It is only 6000 kip to ride one direction which is pretty cheap and easy to get to.
This structure is known as the pumpkin. You enter through the mouth of the demon structure and go up a sets of stairs several levels to eventually stand all the way at the top. This signifies hell at the bottom, Earth in the middle, and heaven at the top.
Inside the bottom level of “hell”. I didn’t realize you could walk in there at first.
As I went up one set of very narrow stairs, I realized that there were more sculptures in the center and even narrower stairs going up the direct center.
Here is the view on the Earth layer:
And the view in the center of the Heaven layer:
The view standing at the top. There are a lot of people trying to get around a narrow and sloped level at the top.
View of the 390 foot long giant reclining buddha from the top of the pumpkin.
I am fascinated with sculptures and mythology so snapped quite a few pictures even though I am unable to find an online guide for the meaning.
All of the sculptures are intersting not only because of their very large size but also their artistic detail. They look like they are very old but only date back to 1958. Flooding from the Mekong River right next to the park is causing decay of many of the structures.
The most outstanding sculpture includes this one: Indra, the king of Hindu gods riding the three-headed elephant.
An artistic deity with 12 faces and many hands that are each holding interesting objects.
This is the only temple that was actually constructed there in the park.
A four-armed deity sitting on a horse.
