Wat Phra Mongkhon Ming Mueang

Hilltop Buddhist Park With The Large Seated Phra Mongkhon Ming Mueang Buddha · Amnat Charoen, Amnat Charoen

Wat Phra Mongkhon Ming Mueang is the Buddhist park of Phutthaupatham Phu Dang Nai, set on a low, forested rise on the edge of Amnat Charoen town in north-east Thailand, and its great golden Buddha, seated in meditation and gazing out over the trees, is the symbol of the province and appears on its seal. Local people often call the image the Phra Yai, the big Buddha. The park is a place of daily worship and quiet walks rather than a tourist site: stairs and paths lead through shady dipterocarp woodland and rock outcrops to the terrace below the image, with smaller shrines, halls and a view over the flat Isaan countryside. An annual fair honours the image. Amnat Charoen itself became a province only in 1993, carved out of Ubon Ratchathani, and it remains one of the least visited in Thailand - a place of rice fields, silk weaving, sticky rice and som tam, with the Mekong on its eastern edge at Chanuman and the sandstone plateau of Phu Sa Dok Bua National Park to the north. Ubon Ratchathani is about an hour away by road, and Yasothon a similar distance west.

Phutthaupatham Phu Dang Nai, Bung, Amnat Charoen, Amnat Charoen, 37000, Thailand

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the park at Phu Dang Nai is open every day of the year, with no closing day, from about 6 am to about 6 pm, and the terrace and the image can be approached during daylight; halls may be locked outside ceremony times, and the park can be busy or partly closed during the annual fair and on major Buddhist days. Stalls selling offerings and food keep daytime hours. Buses from Ubon Ratchathani run through the day but thin out in the early evening. The traps are climbing at midday in the hot season, arriving on the fair day when you wanted quiet, finding no tuk-tuk to take you back at dusk, and missing the last bus to Ubon. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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