Phra Pathom Chedi – Largest Stupa in the World
Walked out of Nakhon Pathom’s train station and it was squarely right front of us. The scale of the chedi is huge compared to the rest of the town, which, after all, is named after the chedi.
It appeared small for “the largest chedi in Thailand” from the train station, where I first saw it.
And we started walking towards it … and walking … and walking.
And when I realised (visually) it hasn’t gotten any bigger, this thing must be massive!
The chedi is approximately 120 metres high.
The sheer size of it is hard to tell, even up close like this. If you care to imagine, those irregular specks on top are not dirt but pigeons. (To architects, the tiles are about 150mm x 150mm for scale).
Like all chedis, there’s no “inside” per say. So we walked around the also unassumingly large colonnade. The whole atmosphere is really, urm, ORANGE though it’s not captured on camera (thank you, JPEG algorithms). And the colour really lends itself to the calming serenity, kind of like, a perpetual quiet sunset feeling.
Then you see a statue that looks a little “CHINESE”?
Sure enough, Phra Pathom Chedi also claims to be the oldest temple in Thailand (trans: Pathom means “of the beginning”). So it has a lot of history going for it (apparently since the 4th century) but what you see today is initiated by King Mongkut in 1853.
So the statues are ballast stones from Chinese ships that sailed here a few hundred years ago. What?
Well, why use boring rectilinear stones when you can carve elaborate statues just for keeping ships bouyant? After we load our ships with much heavier cargo, we’ll just dump these elaborate-looking statues onshore!
Calling the chinese opulent?? Who dares to be so insolent…
