Tag Archives: road trip

The Extensive Wat Analyao, Phayao…

…More Northern Twitterings.

When touring the north, I spent one night in Phayao. And you might be thinking “Who the heck goes there? There must be few tourists.” Well, yes, it is a sleepy kind of place – pleasantly so – but a lot of people must go there because the hotel I’d chosen to stay in was fully booked. After uttering a few obscenities I discovered this was a GoodThing.

Nosing around on Google Maps I found a new hotel right on the lake. So new that Google Earth and Street View show it as a building site. The ABIZZ Hotel (yes, all caps) is really nice and highly recommended.

If you pay a little extra you get a lake view. I didn’t; so I didn’t!

travel, thailand, ABIZZ hotel, phayao

travel, thailand, phayao

Anyhoo, across the lake (okay, you have to drive around it not across it) and up a hill is Wat Analyao. This is not your average run-of-the-mill Buddhist temple. I don’t really know how to describe it. Extensive, as per my headline, mostly ancient, a wide variety of buildings, temples, pagodas, and statues in different styles. In fact, you name it they have it. And it’s all contained in a heavily wooded, overgrown park-like setting. I must have spent two hours there.

Oh, and I don’t have any aerial photos because the trees cover everything. All you would see is tree tops.

I might have made it sound spooky. It isn’t. There’s a kind of reverence to the place.

Adjacent to the entrance is this building…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

…but as far as I could figure, you don’t go in there, but rather, head through this gate and up some steps…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

After that you’re on your own to create your own route. The pathway splits into five. I chose to start with the leftmost working my way to the rightmost, exploring whatever I could find down each path.

One of the many teak temples…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

And then down one of the pathways was this rocket ready to lift-off to Mars…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

Okay, I have a good imagination!

Then there was this Buddha statue, with the common seven-headed naga (snake) for protection…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

A typical teak interior with gold Buddha statue – a little blurred as there was almost no light…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

Of course, there were Buddha statues everywhere…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

Some of the buildings seem to be completely unused. It took me a while to figure how to sneak into this unlit one…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

In case you’re thinking there’s too many statues and not enough pagodas, well…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

There you go. Which brings us back to the entrance…

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

…which is the only place you can get a view of Lake Phayao.

travel, thailand, wat analyao, phayao

wwiPhew!