The Sanctuary of Truth

Pattaya’s attraction list is almost entirely modern, and this is the piece of it that justifies the whole arrangement. The Sanctuary of Truth is a hundred metres of carved hardwood standing on the shore at Naklua, and there is nothing else like it in Thailand.

What it actually is

Not an ancient temple, and not really a temple. It is a building in the shape of one, put up by a private individual as a work of art and an argument: that human civilisation rests on religion and philosophy, and that a building can be made to say so.

Every surface inside and out is carved. The figures are drawn from Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, arranged by hall, and the scale only becomes clear once you are underneath them: the roof structure alone runs to a height most temples never reach, and all of it is timber.

It is built of wood alone. The claim made for it is that no nails were used anywhere in the structure, which is joined with wooden pegs and mortises in the traditional way. Whether that holds in every last beam after forty years of replacement is not something a visitor can check, and it is the claim the place makes about itself.

Why it is never finished

This is the part that confuses people who arrive expecting a completed monument and find scaffolding, sawdust and men with chisels.

Teak weathers. The building stands on an exposed coast, in salt air, in a climate that takes 1,381mm of rain a year. Carvings facing the sea decay and are replaced while other parts of the building are still being made for the first time. The work has run continuously since 1981 and there is no date at which it stops.

So the scaffolding in every photograph is not a phase you have been unlucky enough to catch. It is the building’s normal condition, and the workshop on site is as much a part of a visit as the halls are.

Visitors wear hard hats, issued at the entrance and not optional, because this is an active construction site that happens to sell tickets. Nothing makes the point faster.

Going

Go in the morning. The building’s main face is towards the sea on the west, so by midday the light on it flattens and the carving loses the depth that makes it worth photographing. Mornings are also cooler, and there is very little shade at the waterline.

It is a private attraction and it charges admission, and we publish no figure: prices at Thai attractions move without notice and a stale number is worse than none. Expect it to cost more than a temple, because it is not one.

Allow an hour and a half. Less than an hour is a walk through a large wooden room; the detail is the reason to be there and it does not reward hurrying.

There is a dress code in the ordinary Thai sense, shoulders and knees covered, and the hard hat comes on top of it.

Where it sits

Naklua is the oldest part of Pattaya, on the northern side past the headland, and the Sanctuary is a little further up the same coast. That makes it the one genuine sight within reach on foot of a beach: Wong Amat, the quietest of the city’s three, is immediately south of it.

From central Pattaya it is a short songthaew ride north. From the far end of Walking Street it is the whole length of the city, which is a useful way to picture how little the two have to do with each other.

The rest of what is here, sorted by what each thing actually is rather than ranked, is on things to do in Pattaya, and the city itself is on the Pattaya guide.