Nakhon Ratchasima Province, the journey to Wat Pa Lak Roi Temple, Thailand. ( 38 )
My visit to Korat in June , 2014, brought back many memory’s for me. It was some 6 years before I visited this province before. One stop I made was at Wat Pa Lak Roi in Nonthai, about 25 kilometres outside Korat. It is not an easy temple to find, lucky I had a friend who drove me there. On arriving at this temple you may imagine you are entering a fun park with all the statues / models about the place. It may seem very strange to see because they are very graphic and some may say not suitable for children. You wonder why a temple would depict scenes like this until you evaluate the depiction.
This is my view only as I saw it. Picture the Temple raised above all these grounds, this depicts heaven and all below depicted hell and all the bad things associated with hell. You can see the same pictures in books whenever hell is shown, pain , suffering, torture. Its always the same. The statues here are graphic showing genitalia and scenes of a disturbing nature. But remember, Buddhist monks placed these here to show the bad and good of society. They are shown in a funny way by extending the models arms and legs to be taken as a symbolic way and not meant to hurt or harm the viewer. I found them amusing, even when you found some with coin slots you could feed 5 or 10 Baht into to here the moans / groans / wailing / of the tortured souls.
You could spend all day at this temple it is a very large site covering 77,000 sq. metres.. It is said it depicts the Laotian invasion of 1826 when the Korat women’s defence fought under Thao Suranaree, her statue can be seen in the centre of Korat. There are various stalls around this temple you can buy food and drink at. Along with the usual items associated with Thailand. Not many people were there on the day I visited so it was a welcome change to wander about without the usual crowds standing in front of items you want to photograph. There are plenty of parking spaces available due to the size of the grounds.
One thing I did find amusing and refreshing, was how friendly the monks were at this temple. Inviting people to check all parts of the temple and laughing and joking with me when I entered a solemn part of the temple. It made the day more interesting.
The province is located on the western end of the Korat Plateau, separated from the Chao Phraya river valley by the Phetchabun and Dong Phaya Yen mountain ranges. Two national parks are in the province - the Khao Yai in the west and the Thap Lan in the south. Both parks are in the forested mountains of the Sankamphaeng Range, the southern prolongation of the Dong Phaya Yen mountains. Nakhon Ratchasima, or Korat, is a large province on the north eastern plateau and acts as a gateway to other provinces in the Northeast. It is 259 kilometres ( 161 miles ) from Bangkok and has an area of around 20,494 square kilometres (7,913 sq mi), making it the biggest Thai province. The province is rich in Khmer culture and has a long history.
The area around Khorat was already an important centre in the times of the Khmer empire in the 11th century, as can be seen by the temple ruins in the Phimai historical park. Still, Nakhon Ratchasima Province is one province where there is a sizable Northern Khmer population. A new walled city with a surrounding moat, designated as Nakhon Ratchasima, was built in the seventeenth century by order of the King Narai, as the easternmost command post, guarding the Kingdom's border and supervising its Lao and Cambodian vassals. It continued this duty during the Bangkok Period, although it was seized by deceit during Chao Anuwong of Vientiane's 1826 revolt against the King Rama III of Siam.
Nakhon Ratchasima has long been the most important political and economic centre in the northeastern region. In the late nineteenth century, the railroad reached Khorat became the junction of two main rail lines in the Northeastern, Issan, region. In 1933 it was the stronghold of the royalist troops in the Boworadej Revolt, as they fought the new democratic government in Bangkok. In the 1950's, the Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base was built in Nakhon Ratchasima; from 1961 until 26 February 1976, this facility was also used as a base by the United States Air Force.