The Stone Buddha - Bhunyakiri Sri Suvarnabhumi

I like big Buddhas, and I like when things are carved into mountains. The great Stone Buddha of Suphanburi Province checks both boxes!

The Bhunyakiri Sri Suvarnabhumi stands an impressive 108 meters tall. 108 is considered to be a holy number in the Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism). Buddhist prayer beads come in strands of 108, and temple bells in Japan are rung 108 times at the new year.

The statue is also 88 meters wide - a number signifying good luck in Chinese culture.

All of this is significant, as the Buddha statue is built in the spot where some Buddhist scholars believe that the earliest missionaries first brought the religion from India and began preaching to the people of ancient Siam.

The towering carving, started over twenty years ago, is still incomplete, though an active temple has been carved out in a short and wide tunnel through the granite cliffs behind the Buddha statue itself.

Within the tunnel, people prayed in front of dozens of statues, lit candles to float in a small pool of water, and received blessings from monks. One Thai monk was especially excited to talk to our little group of foreigners. He asked us where we were from, and walked us through the temple. 

"I studied in India" the monk told us. "Before that, I got degrees in economics, philosophy, and political science." He shrugged. "But I wanted to be a monk."