The Sanctuary of Truth is down Soi 12 in Naklua right on the beach, got to admit it is quite an amazing place, never seen so much carved teakwood in one place, but lets start on why we were swayed to go and visit The Sanctuary of Truth in the first place.
Every where mentions the dolphin show they have, there really is nothing better than watching a trained dolphin jumping through hoops to be thrown a fish, we all watched Flipper as kids and would have liked to have kept him in our own fish tank or swimming pool, the bad news is Flipper is dead, there is no more dolphin show at The Sanctuary of Truth.
Entry is 500baht which is quite steep just to see a wooden building and a pretty crappy cultural show, but, there aint no where else in the world I think you will see a building like this, as I said before, it is quite an amazing place.
The set up of the place is a bit dis-organised, ie you park up and get your stuff out of the car, then look for a ticket office, no signage for it but it is by the entrance, buy your tickets and they try to sell you extras, thought she was offering me a massage but it turns out you can get it on the ticket price if you pay more, plus they got other rubbish they will try to sell you as you wonder what the hell they are going on about.
Then they tell you to get back in your car and drive down the road, this is after unloading all your crap for the day, park in the new car park, you can see this amazing building in front of you and you want to take pictures of it, but some security guard is calling you to get you to walk down the alley next to the toilets where you can't take pictures, let alone see the building, he tries to guide you past the workshop and souvenier shop in the hope you might buy some junk.
Fact or Fiction?
Supposedly when the guy first started building this teak house he was told by a soothsayer he would die when it was completed, now it was here when I first moved here 20 odd years ago so it's going quite slowly, at present there are around 50 Thai staff carving wood and working on it, at the present rate of progress the bloke should live till he is in his early 200's, it is a big place, the building covers 2 Rai, nearly an acre, and is 105 meters high.
I took hundreds of photos of this Sanctuary of Truth, it's hard deciding which ones to post as just about everything has carvings on it and is quite outstanding, even the risers on the stairs were carved, only wood I could see that wasn't carved was the floor boards.
Must be millions of dollars of teak wood gone into this project, down the road but still on the grounds is their store of teak wood tree trunks, now these are big, must be millions of baht just laying there doing nothing but waiting their turn to be carved up into something nice looking.
The carved elephant heads are pretty much life size, although the humans they are carrying are Thai size
A view out to the sea, the next beach along is Wong Amat Beach which is quite nice, also in the local area are many good German restaurants, so you could quite easily spend the day in Naklua.
More on Wong Amat Beach.
In The Sanctuary of Truth grounds are horses for horse rides, also horse and carriage rides, a speed boat to see the temple from the sea, some ATV's which you can rent, plus a few other things, nice place to kill a couple hours in the morning or afternoon.
The Sanctuary of Truth.
206/2 Moo 5, Naklua Soi 12, Naklua Road, Banglamung, Chonburi, 20150
Tel +66 (0)-3822-5407
Open 08.00 Close 17.00