Sala Keoku

Bunleua Sulilat was a Lao mystic who developed a personal cosmology mixing Buddhist, Hindu and his own material, and who built two sculpture parks: Xieng Khuan outside Vientiane from 1958, and, after fleeing to Thailand at the 1975 revolution, Sala Keoku at Nong Khai from 1978. Both are fields of unreinforced concrete figures built by untrained volunteer followers - Buddhas, nagas, Hindu deities, animals, human figures and allegorical scenes, some over twenty metres tall, crowded together in a way that is genuinely strange to walk through. A large multi-headed naga sheltering a seated Buddha is the best known. One area, the Wheel of Life, is entered through a mouth and shows the cycle of birth, ageing and death in figures. Bunleua died in 1996 and his embalmed body lies in a glass case on the upper floor of the museum building at the centre of the park.

What you actually see

• The concrete figures - Buddhist, Hindu and invented forms, some over twenty metres.
• The naga Buddha - the multi-headed serpent sheltering a seated figure.
• The Wheel of Life - the enclosure entered through a mouth showing the life cycle.
• Bunleua's body - embalmed and displayed in the museum at the centre.

When to go

November to February; the park is open ground with limited shade and gets very hot. Two hours covers it.

Honest expectations

Little shade and hot from mid-morning. The embalmed body is displayed openly and some visitors find it confronting. The sculptures are unreinforced concrete and several are cracking. Ticketed. Almost no English interpretation.

Nearby

Nong Khai town and Tha Sadet market are west; the Friendship Bridge to Laos is close.