Wat Muang Ang Thong - Tallest Buddha In Thailand - 92 Meter Tall Statue

Welcome everybody. Today's video finds us in Aung Thong. We're about an hour and a half or so north of Bangkok and about another 45 minutes or so north of Ayutthaya. This is a place most tourists don't go. Most tourists go to Bangkok or Ayutthaya, Chiang Mai or go down to the south or whatever. But Aung Thong has some really cool stuff and the one thing that is really cool about Aung Thong is it has the largest Buddha in all of Thailand and it is right behind me. It's 92 meters tall. It cost 3.75 million dollars or so when it was built and we're going to walk around here and we're going to see first we'll look at the Hell's Garden. Then we'll look at a couple of the buildings. We'll look at a Buddha that's solid silver in one of the halls and then the last thing we'll look at is that big huge tall Buddha. So let's see what we see today. So what you'll see in a lot of the ordination halls is they'll have the murals and they'll depict like heaven, hell and then the earthly realm. But what they do here is they have all these figures out here and their life size and this is what they call the Hell's Garden. So it's kind of a gruesome scene. They got all kinds of stuff going on here but this is part of the Buddhism and they just have it out here. You can see there's a naked guy. They don't mess about. They just show kind of everything. Tongues getting ripped out, people getting stabbed, all kinds of kind of gruesome acts. This kind of brings out, you know, it shows like the children and stuff like that, the lessons about the Buddhism and because they have the tenets about like no drinking, no smoking, all of that stuff and this is what they got. So this is out here. We got some of the hand carts and they got the little shrine over there for like the fertility thing. But yeah, this is kind of a wild little garden and they have all the other figures and they're just scattered out here amongst the trees. They have the boiling pot with the people in it and I'm not sure what the significance of the giant tongues are, but they have them. Yeah, there's quite a bit to this temple. Now this is an Ayutthaya era temple that was destroyed by the Burmese whenever they came through this region in the 18th century. They came through here down to Ayutthaya and they sacked this city. They were through here like 1765 to 1767 or so. So this temple was completely destroyed and then they've rebuilt it. I think they finished rebuilding it like in 1982, something like that, and then they started building that gigantic Buddha shortly thereafter. We got a statue of Guanyin here, all kinds of things out here amongst the temple. And then we have this ordination hall that's surrounded by the lotus flowers. I saw a whole bunch of monks gathered up over here so they might have it locked up, but hopefully we'll be able to get inside. This is this hall right here. It's quite cool with all the lotus flowers around and then you can see it has the ashes of people that have been cremated here at the temple. They're in the wall. And then they did the lotus flowers around the ordination stones. And you got the Naga. This is a massive hall. So you have the figure up there like Vishnu riding like a like a dragon or something. Kind of cool. So let's go inside here. So this hall has all the murals painted and then it's just a marble floor. That's the Buddha footprint and then the main image inside of here. There's quite a few people in here praying. So you can see the image and then all the murals around. So these are the scenes of the Jataka, all of that. So the Thais will come in here and they'll know what these stories are. Yeah, they're quite nice. They look like they've been touched up pretty recently. See all the stories of the Buddha's life. And there's some inscriptions down the bottom in Thai. Yeah, this is nice in here. You can see the detail that they put into them. Yeah, I always like to see all of these murals. Some really nice artwork. These guys over here, they're sticking the gold leaf on the little Buddhas and stuff in the front. Okay, so let's go over and let's see the all silver Buddha now. Yeah, this is a really nice building. The doors are always cool with those carvings. This one looks like here on the side. Got those mythical birds up there. All the Bangkok styling above the windows. You see all the little figures they have all through the trees. We got a lady monk over here. We got that four-headed God right there by the tree. And they got all the little stuff, little snacks, drinks, all the stuff for the donations of the temple, stuff like that will be here. Okay, let's go in here. And then there's another little shrine over here. That's like a Chinese shrine. These are the, like the stones that they'll bury underneath the ordination, like the Bua Sima stones, and they'll bury one underneath the Buddha. I'm not sure what that is. It looks like something, but I could be mistaken. And then they got the monks in here that are doing the blessings and stuff. And let's go up into this hall. You see all the little silver pieces of glass on the outside? That's because the Buddha in here is solid silver. They have this one here that's white, and then they have the gold one right here, the Naga. Then you can see the bell tower back over that way. Let's take off our shoes and let's go. Yeah, I forgot how cool this hall looked. So that Buddha right there is made out of all silver. They put all the little pieces of glass on all the columns, so it's quite cool. And over here they've done like a little mural. Yeah, really cool. And then they have all the figures scattered all around inside of here, so all of the monks. And there's a lot of people that come in here, do the donations and stuff. Yeah, so how cool is that? So it kind of reminds me of the Buddha at Wat Tramit. That one's five and a half tons out of pure gold. And there's a couple in Ayutthaya that one of them is gold and silver, and they have another one that's all silver there also. But it's not something you see every day. You can see all the little figures around. They've really stuck a lot of gold leaf on all of them. And then they got the like the mask and stuff and all their little relics inside of there. And I don't know how old this is. You see the face is similar to kind of Sukhothai styling. It's kind of the egg shape. But you know, the Buddhas are always cast in like the artists, like whatever the artist sees as what the Buddha should look like. We got the Chinese figures and oh, this is kind of cool. So they've carved these here in the wood. Then they got the Ganesh, other things. So we have a picture of one of the monks. And this is him right here. This is his coffin. You'll see that a lot of these temples where it'll be a famous monk, and they'll kind of mummify him. And they'll leave him out here and the Thais will come and pray to him. If it's a monk that was like they saw somebody with a lot of power, or like really, really a good monk, then they will kind of pray to him and make a shrine and stuff like that. You can see the bell tower and the drum tower right next to this all silver we hand. And then you can just see the big Buddha back there. And then all of this is the monk quarters. They got all the normal stuff for the temple. And let's go look in this little Chinese shrine here. You see they got the dragons. They got all the little figures and stuff all around. And then they have the wire here to keep the pigeons out. So let's go in here and let's look at this multi armed God that they have. I think this is the Guanyin. Sometimes you'll see it with like 11 heads and 1000 arms. And then they have all the little figures. And I'm not sure why they have the beads over here. But they do. You see the paintings around. I really like how they build these. That has 11 heads so you can see everything that's going on. And then 1000 arms so it can do all the good work. And the story goes that the Guanyin was a Buddha, but didn't want to go to heaven because there was so much stuff to still be done on earth. So how cool is that? It just towers up above the rice fields. You can see this we hand here where it has that all silver Buddha inside. Okay, let's walk over here. There's another little hall I want to look in and then we'll look a little bit more at the Hell's Garden. And then we'll go see the big Buddha. They have a little building right next to that silver. We hand that has where the monks will set up and they'll do the blessings over here. Also has all the pictures of all the royalty that's came here. Also some pictures of when they built the machete and they have this shrine here. You see like the princesses that came. This picture is getting kind of faded. This is when they had the scaffolding up around the big Buddha. And so these are like the hair rolls back when it was down on the ground. They got a ton of little pictures here, the face, kind of the shell of it when it was being built. There it is without a head. And then when they started painting it gold. So you can see right here they started up at the top and worked their way down. Another one of the little standing Buddhas and then the goddess of the earth since she's floating the world. Now there's a little data plate over here that says this temple was founded in 1687. And then it was destroyed by the Burmese like I said at the start. And then they rebuilt it in 1982. They got all these drums and they got a another little Chinese shrine over there. And they got the war elephants. This will probably be the like the famous battle with King Narasawan. Quite a bit to see here. They got some of the locals over here playing xylophones and stuff. I thought it was piped in music but it's these kids over here playing. They got a pond over here for the tides to come over and feed the fish. You can see the outer wall of the temple. Then they got the Naga fountains. Yeah they have so many of these little figures out here. We got a cat racked out inside of there. He's found the perfect spot out of the sun and nobody's over there disturbing him. Right in front of the big Buddha they have this little place to sit. They got a little shrine here. There's that monk the one who's in the coffin in that one hall. And they got it set up here with them. They got the mesh to keep the birds out and the birds just fly over the top of them. You got a shrine over there and then up here this is what we came here to see. How cool is this? This is the 92 meter tall Buddha. I think it's the tallest Buddha in the world. There's one in Japan that's the tallest. That's a standing Buddha that's like 100 meters tall. And then there's a couple in China that are built into hills that are made out of like stone and stuff like that. And then I think they're planning on building one that's 160 meters tall in Kanchanaburi. This is what we came up here to see. This thing is just absolutely colossal. So what they say is if you come up here and you touch the hand then you're going to be very very lucky. So you got the stairs built just to get up to his hand. It looks like they're painting over there they're going to touch him up a little bit. But just look at the size. So that woman is standing right there and her head doesn't even come up to the hands. I think it's something like 76 meters across. You see his knees. So everybody wants to come up to right here. And just check out those fingers. They are massive. And so people put like the flowers and stuff they have little things set up. I mean that's one meter just his fingernail. It's just colossal. And then this is looking back over here. Now they said whenever they did the temple that they found two tablets. One of them was called Saladang and then another one that's really really important to the Thais. And this is the water you just get a little cup of it and then you go dump it on the fingers of the Buddha. One more look here at this gigantic Buddha. Then they have a little data plate saying when it was built. You see the monk over there dumping the water on the fingers. Then they have some other little shrines and stuff all around. And then you can see off into the distance it's just all rice paddies around here. And then this looks back over into the temple itself. This shrine here looks like a shrine to Aikai. There's a temple down in the Komsitamarat that has Aikai. It has all the chickens and stuff. And that's kind of like what this looks like. And so the people are getting the sticks and pulling out the little balls out of the little plastic tub and stuff trying to get their fortune. It's pretty nice. They got a little garden and stuff around the base of the big Buddha. And some people selling some snacks, some drinks and mangoes and stuff like that. Then they got the tree wrapped up in the cloth. That's going to finish up our video over here at Wat Muang in Aung Thong. This is a really cool temple to see. Like I said before not too many people come up here. This is kind of off the touristy trail. But it's a real shame because this Buddha is just absolutely massive. It's the tallest Buddha in Thailand and it is like the ninth tallest in all of the world. And it's worth just coming over here and taking a look at for sure. And there's a lot more at this temple to see. That all silver Buddha and some of the other little halls and stuff like that are kind of cool. If you like the temple architecture and stuff like that it's really nice to see. So hopefully you enjoyed it. If you did make sure you smash the like button. If you're new to the channel subscribe, stick around and you're notified whenever I post a new video. And if you've been here or if you have any questions ask me in a comment down below. And until next time from over here in Aung Thong, remember life is a journey. Until next time, enjoy!