The
Sculpture
Park

You can't come to Nong Khai and not see the very strange Sculpture Park known as Salakaewkoo. A visit here will truly leave you in awe and it's only 5km from Mutmee Guest House.

World famous, as one one of the most extraordinary artistic creations of South-East Asia, it contains sculptures that rise more than seven stories high!

It was built by the mystic shaman Luang Poo Boun Leua Sourirat, who passed away in 1996, after constructing it, with the help of devotees, for more than twenty years.

Luang Poo Boun Leua Sourirat loved snakes, so much so that he believed in the "coming of the age of the snake". Seeing them as the purest of all animals, having no arms or legs with which to destroy the world, he described himself as being half man, half snake. Was this love of these phallic like animals in some way connected with his reputed homosexuality?

He claimed that in his youth he had fallen into a hole in the forest where upon he met the acetic "Kaewkoo" who lived at the bottom of it. "Kaewkoo" taught him all secrets of the underworld, not least about snakes which were the principal inhabitants of that realm. Later, he trained as a Hindu Rishi in Vietnam and mixed Hinduism into his system of beliefs.
As a Lao national, he first started to produce sculpture on the riverbank on the Lao side of the Maekong river. But as the communists became more powerful, he became concerned that they may not accept his unorthodox views and so fled to Nong Khai in 1974, where he embarked on the creation of Salakaewkoo; his grandest artistic vision. The name means the "Pavilion of Kaewkoo".

Luang Poo passed away in 1996 aged in his early seventies. He was ill, it was said, from a fall from a ladder up one of his sculptures. But others claimed that he was suffering from some kind of anemia.

Today his mummified body can be seen on the third floor of the main building, under a glass hemisphere. Disciples claim his hair still grows and must be cut once in a while!

The main building and incence chapel were built after his death, following his plans and drawings.

 He always claimed that his followers, who built all the statues, were entirely untrained, but their skill came to them from a divine source. Moreover, he frequently warned that anyone who drank even a sip of water in the park would eventually give to it all their money!

 However, in the years following his death Salakaewkoo became more and more run down and untidy... until the local government stepped in and decided that his legacy should not be allowed to deteriorate further, so now it is being repaired and restored to its former grandeur.

There are more than one hundred sculptures in the park some of them reaching seven stories up into the sky.

Some depict snakes,
others images taken from either Theravada or Mahayana Buddhism. Hinduism is well represented too, with images of Shiva and
Pavati, Brahma and Vishnu.

The greatest sculpture of all is the Wheel of Life at the far end of the park. As this diagram shows (for a clear printable copy, click on it to download an Adobe pdf version), life in Luang Poo's view, is a cycle of influences and phases, which start at one's conception and end at one's death.

The Buddhist elements of heat, breath, wisdom and change are represented, as are the stages of birth, aging, suffering and death. Finally, one follows the Lord Buddha over the wall of life to nirvana... or do you?... there's one last sculpture and if you want to know who he is, you must come here & I'll explain!

If you visit Salakaewkoo and thoroughly enjoy it, we highly recommend checking out the historical park near Ban Phu, it is truly one of the most fascinating sites in Isaan.
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