Sala Kaew Ku

Its creator was Bunleua Sulilat, or "Pu Lua", a layman his followers called "Luang Pu" (venerable grandfather). The association's own book Sala Kaew Ku (1997 edition) gives his birth year as 1933, while Wikipedia and foreign scholars give 7 June 1932, in Nong Khai, as the seventh of eight children. The book tells how his eldest sister, Khamplio Sulilat, dreamed that a white-robed ascetic brought her an emerald naga and told her to collect it in seven months; their ageing mother then conceived and gave birth to her seventh child after a seven-month pregnancy. The family took it as the dream fulfilled, and Khamplio and her husband adopted the baby at birth.

The boy loved going to the temple. When he was six, Khamplio died and he went back to his birth parents, but he kept rebuking adults for wrongdoing and was not well liked by his relatives. At twelve he ran away and wandered until he found the "Kaew Ku hermitage" in Laos, where he studied and practised under a sage until he was twenty, then set out to wander and teach.

Another version, passed down among his followers, says that as a child he fell into a hole or cave and met a hermit named Keoku (Kaew Ku), who could take the form of a naga and became his spiritual teacher. Prof. Justin McDaniel, a Buddhist studies scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who first visited Sala Kaew Ku in 1994, writes in Architects of Buddhist Leisure (2016) that Bunleua trained as a shaman in Vietnam and told followers he was "half-man, half-snake", taught by snake spirits — and that some followers believe part of him lives on as a snake.

Around the age of thirty Bunleua came home to care for his parents. His mother died in 1964 and left him 8 rai of land at Ban Xieng Khuan, Tha Deua, Vientiane, which he turned into a vast "shrine of deities" that drew followers from Asia and Europe. The association's book dates this to 1970, while most foreign sources say work began in 1958. It is today's Buddha Park (Wat Xieng Khuan), now run by the Lao government as a public park and tourist sight.

In 1975 the Pathet Lao took power. McDaniel notes the new government did not support religion for its first two or three years, so Bunleua crossed the Mekong back to Thailand with his followers, leaving the unfinished statues behind, and set up the Nong Khai Buddhist Association, recognised by the Religious Affairs Department in 1976.

In 1978 his followers bought about 41 rai at Ban Samakkhi, Hat Kham, and work began on a new park named after his teacher — Sala Kaew Ku — just a few kilometres from the first park across the river. Hundreds of unpaid volunteers did the building with cement donated by the faithful. Bunleua had no training in art or architecture; the figures came from his imagination and visions, while individual statues were paid for by many donors — Thais from across the country, Chinese, Lao, Vietnamese and Westerners.

There were hard times too. The association's book records that in early 1984 Bunleua was accused of a serious offence — which the association declines to name — and was imprisoned until late 1986. After his release he built many more figures, reaching 209 Buddha and deity forms in all; the tallest is about 25 m (the book says up to 33 m).

Bunleua's central idea was that all religions can live together. The association describes the park as a model of the "immortal city of Kaew Ku Maha Nibbana" — a land of release from defilement. Each sculpture has an explanation in Thai and Isan at its base, many in verse. A 2016 study by Assoc. Prof. Ornnong Rittrachai of Khon Kaen University examined 141 teaching sculptures: 89 on religion, 34 on doctrine, Dhamma riddles and proverbs, and 13 on literature and Isan folk tales. A 2021 study by Sophee Untaya of Mahasarakham University found the inscriptions reflect the multicultural life of the two Mekong banks — in belief, ethnicity, language, tradition and clergy.

The best-known sculpture is a Buddha seated on the coils of a naga, with seven naga heads spread above. The "Wheel of Life" is entered through a giant mouth, like passing through a womb, then circled clockwise through birth, marriage, old age, illness and death, ending with a young man stepping over the wall to become a Buddha — release from the cycle of rebirth. Elsewhere an elephant wades through a pack of dogs (a lesson not to be troubled by gossip), and there are Rahu swallowing the moon, Shiva and Uma, Hanuman, Ganesh, Guanyin, Angulimala, Prince Siddhartha cutting his hair and Sujata offering milk rice, the Isan legend of Ya Thuat Ae Khai, the naga princess and Khun Thueang — even foreign soldiers and mermaids.

The old pavilion, used from 1980 to 1995, became dilapidated, so Bunleua had it pulled down and a new one begun. During construction he fell ill — reportedly after a fall from one of his sculptures, compounded by a blood disease — and died on 10 August 1996, aged 64. As he had instructed, his followers did not embalm, cremate or bury him but placed his body in a glass urn; it has not decayed and lies on the third floor of the new pavilion, completed to his plans: a three-storey concrete building with a mosque-like dome and the Om symbol on its gable. The lower floors hold Buddha images, deities and photographs of Bunleua through his life.

On 18 January 2006 Sala Kaew Ku made headlines when gunmen shot dead a Lao-American couple, who claimed descent from the Lan Xang royal line, as they were about to pray in the pavilion. Police arrested suspects that May.

Today Sala Kaew Ku is one of Nong Khai's best-known sights. Art books such as the Raw Vision Outsider Art Sourcebook and Taschen's Fantasy Worlds cite it as a classic of "outsider art", and it is often compared with the Gardens of Bomarzo in Italy. Visitors usually pair it with Wat Pho Chai, home of Luang Pho Phra Sai, and cross the Friendship Bridge to Buddha Park in Vientiane to see Bunleua's work on both banks of the Mekong.