Visited February 2023.

Well, well, well… I must admit that the presence of the temple Phra That Phanom in That Phanom town, very close to Mekong River and the border with Laos is one of the strangest proposal to word heritage list I’ve ever seen (I can compare it with Palau’s Tet El Bad). I spent two hours and a half (yes, two hours and a half! because of the bus timetable; I could make it in 30 minutes or even less) walking around it, looking into the spaces and shrines open to the public, approaching the stupa from different angles, talking with few pilgrims, trying to figure out what are the “historic buildings and associated landscape”, looking back at the new paintings and sculptures on the temple’s walls… And no – I was not able to find the very well hidden outstanding universal value or even local value. It all looked to me so artificial, so unauthentic… The wat is popular among local Thai and Lao people. But when I asked about it my Thai colleagues from Bangkok and Korat, they both said it was a temple with a piece of Buddha’s collarbone, just a local temple, they’ve never visited. Neither their parents who are religious people. And the temple looks new, because it is new: it was rebuilt after the storm in 1975; and it was rebuilt not exactly as it looks before these heavy rains… Some say it is the oldest stupa in South-East Asia; some say the chronicle Tamnan Urankathat mentions it; some say it is a spiritual inspiration for local people (the temple Wat Phra Bua Bok in Phu Phra Bat was inspired by this one); some say it is a symbol of religious and architectural perfection; some say… But is it equal to having an outstanding value for all the people in the world and enough to find its place on WH list? (I was wondering which photo I should attach to this short review…)