Phra That Phanom

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 …

Oh my, I dislike religious-based sites so much. So when my friend from Udon Thani wanted to drive here a couple of years ago I only agreed if we stopped at the mushroom-shaped rocks at Phu Phan NP on the way. The drive to Nakhon Phanom takes 3 hours for me, 2 1/2 for her on the way back.

At first sight the stupa looks like any other in Thailand. On second sight, it still does. On third, after checking the document now, it's actually rebuilt and looks less interesting. So according to their description this was the first to have this kind of architecture and it inspired the rest of the region - fair enough. That might be something to impact not only Thailand but also Laos across the Mekong.

As for the other criteria is is trying to inscribe, literature and all that, I am not familiar with it. It sounds important for Buddhists so I don't want to talk bad about it.

I'm going to cut this short now and just say you can save yourself some time not to visit here if you have already seen many stupas around SE Asia. If you are religious then you maybe have a better reason to visit. If you leave early you can pack both this place and the NP into one day and it's kind of entertaining.