Sala Keoku

Bunleua Sulilat, born in Nong Khai province in 1932, was a 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 crossing back to Thailand, Sala Keoku at Nong Khai from 1978 - named, by his own account, for the hermit Keoku, his teacher. 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 a circular group of figures showing the cycle of birth, ageing and death. 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.

Highlights

• 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 - a circle of figures showing the cycle of birth and death.
• 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.

Practical notes

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.

Key facts