Hello again fellow explorers. Today I'll show you a bit more of Khao Kho. We were here for only 2 nights but managed to visit quite a few interesting places. One of the biggest things to see around is The Wat Pattanaram Temple.
Wat Pattanaram Khao Kho
Wat Pattanaram was one of the places I really wanted to see. I had so many plans of taking videos with the drone circling around the big Buddha. The winds had different plans for me though and I had to settle for the camera only. Luckily the place is so unique that I had plenty to capture.
The temple has two sides - one with the Big Buddha and on the other side of the road - the temple is covered in colorful ceramics, stone and gold.
Usually you are meant to take your shoes off when you enter inside a temple's building but here, we had to take your shoes way before that. Even though it was in the middle of the week and there weren’t too many tourists in Khao Kho, the temple was filled with visitors. I barely saw any foreigners in the region though. Don’t think driving up in the mountains is on the list of people visiting Thailand.
The ceramic structure of the right side of the temple was like nothing else I've seen before. The colors seem so random when you look close but it looks amazing regardless.
Floor, walls and collumns were all decorated with all sorts of colors coming from ceramics. There were even plates and cups in the walls.
At the very center of the temple were these beautiful golden statues.
Around both sides of the Temple were stairs leading around it and into the building itself.
The view towards the other side of the temple was amazing from above. Somehow these 2 completely different looking structures were complementing each other in the best possible way. As someone that paints and loves colors I could stare at this for ages.
In the distance you can see Pino Latte from my last post.
Inside was interesting. There were paintings, some weird mirrors that would distort your reflection in different ways that had the purpose of showing you how things like 'greed' 'anger' 'humility' etc. would look on you.
The Big Buddha side is a lot brighter and shinier. There are a lot of silvers and crystals embodied in the floors and walls. Underneath it all there is a beautiful garden.
Right next to the temple are a few cafe shops with the more notable being The Barn, sitting right at the edge of the hill.
Don't really know why I don't have more photos from here. I thought Nat made quite a lot on her phone but there weren't any. The place was quite a bit bigger than what's in the photos. There's a whole another area undearneath the treas right beside this big terrace.
After our visit to the temple we were wondering what to go see first and we decided to stop at a place we drove by multiple times. It was one of those flower gardens they had around but this one was pretty big and attracted many people. We didn’t really know what it really looked like before we paid a fee and drove up to the parking lot, because most of it is hidden from the road in.
There are a few parks in the area and it seemed like the best one was quite near. Our plan was to visit it on our way back to Bangkok after we checked out from the hotel. The Khao Kho National Park seemed like a pretty cool place with waterfalls, cherry trees and much more. Unfortunately once we went in the guards at the barrier told us it is off limits for us since people live there. It was quite confusing because the area was filled with signs for the National Park. I guess they didn’t want to bother with visitors at the time.. I have no clue. The Historic park I also wanted to visit was an hour and a half drive away so that was a no go. This leaves us with only 1 place left for me to share but it is an amazing one. I would need some more time to edit all the pictures though, because Nat surprised me with another batch from her phone. I promise though, it is worth the wait.
Thanks for reading everyone. Hope you enjoyed the photos and will be happy to see you in the last chapter of our Khao Kho trip. Hope I’ll be ready with picking and editing all the footage in the upcoming days. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you in the next one!
