Trip Report, Pt. 24A: Wat Khao Sukim 2

Some of the beautiful views at ground level

You can see long rows of
display cases behind this
Buddha image

In part one of this post yesterday you saw an overview of the grounds and buildings at Wat Khao Sukim, several hour's drive South from Pattaya.

My friend was driving me to a long weekend getaway in a coastal area of the Chantaburi province - an area probably best classified here as Laem Sing.

Wat Khao Sukim is a work in progress; a wat without much of an actual wat, if you will. The new construction (there's a model rendering of the temple to come at the top of yesterday's post) will double the amount of buildings that exist there now.

Today we'll try to wrap the post up with some of the photos I didn't have ready yesterday, showing more of the museum interior and the surrounding area.  Since it was approaching closing time I didn't see a couple of the floors of displays, but that just gives me more of a reason to stop there again in a few years and (hopefully) see more of the main temple finished.

A grouping of larger Buddha statues, adorned with silk flowers

There'd been an attempt to organize the countless offerings made to the temple - countless for me, anyway... let me know if you come up with anything like a total if you visit there - but they were grouped together, after a fashion.  Below is a panorama of some of the furniture that had been donated.

Smaller items - and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say thousands of them - stood in glass-walled cabinets, neatly arranged in rows and somewhat grouped by vintage, it seemed. Bowls, pottery, brass work and wooden carvings, both simple and intricate: all had a place.

Even pottery with some serious age to it was set in one spot. We'd speculated that they may have been found while doing excavations during construction of the new main temple. Here they look somewhat haphazard, but my guess is they would eventually find their way into the grand scheme of the place.

It was silent in the halls while we were looking around on one of the huge open floors of displays, so we were (luckily) able to hear the clattering of a gate and the sound of keys as a lock was closed. My friend called out to the guard and we hustled our way over to him to get out. A lovely place, but not somewhere I'd choose to spend the night.

We took the tram back down and stopped at one of a few places still open in the touristy area surrounding the parking lot. I got us each a fresh young coconut from a young girl who cut them open for us. After sitting on ice all day, they were cold and refreshing. I wish I could find them here stateside. We sipped on them through our straws as we left the parking lot and made our way back to Highway 3, and on to the resort.

A young man doing detail upkeep on the naga stair railing smiled for me - or because his work day was nearly finished, one or the other.