Thread: Bangkok Wat Saket The Golden Mount

Situated between Boriphat Road and Lan Luang Road, off Ratchadamnoen Klang Road, Wat Saket is quite an interesting Temple as Temples go, we took 88 photos and it is quite a difficult choice to get it down to 10 or less photos, so worth a visit if you are in the area.

Wat Saket is built on a man made hill 100 meters high and 500 meters diameter, around the outside runs the stairs which lead to the top which has good views over Bangkok and contains Buddha statues, bells and the usual items found at Thai Temples.

The stairs leading to the top of Wat Saket.



King Rama 3 wanted a Chedi similar to the one at Wat Prayoon, sadly the soil wasn't compacted enough and the Chedi collapsed under its own weight, at this time the building of the Temple was abandoned until King Rama 4 in 1865. During King Rama 4's reign he built another Chedi albeit a lot smaller, this one still stands today.

Looking up at the top of Wat Saket.



Wat Prayoon (Bangkok Temple Wat Prayoon)

To shore up the soil for the hill and to stop erosion thousands of logs were used.

During the 18th century the base of the mount was used as the capital's crematorium, around 60,000 plague victims ended up here so you may even end up seeing a ghost, although very unlikely I should imagine.

At the hill bottom of the are the grounds for the Temple, ie the Viharn, places for the monks to live and usual assorted buildings.

Looking down into the Temple grounds and Bangkok in the background.



Looking upwards again at the Chedi.



Each level has lots of bells for you to ring for good luck and annoying everybody around you.
From normal bell shaped bells like these.



To bells like these, probably would be something nice to collect and display, although in this climate you would need a maid to keep the brass ones polished, should think that would be a lot of work here.



The first level at Wat Saket has 8 Buddha statues, 1 for each day of the week and 1 for night time. Yep, can have a good old pray at each one just to get that winning lottery ticket you always wanted.



A small gold leaf covered model of Wat Saket on its Golden Mount. Got to be worth a few Thai baht I reckon.




On the first level is this nice coffee shop, also toilets here if you have the wife or girlfriend with you, you know what they are like.



And back to the top we have a nice little golden chedi which they want 10baht to see, move to the side and zoom in with the camera and you have saved 10 baht