Phu Tok
Accessed via a network of rickety staircases built in, on and around a giant sandstone outcrop, Wat Phu Tok (6.30am-5pm, shut 10-16 April) is one of the region’s straight wonders, with fabulous vistas over the surrounding countryside and a truly soporific atmosphere. Six levels of steps, plus a seventh-level scramble up roots and rocks to the thick timber at the summit, represent the seven factors of enlightenment in Buddhist psychology. Monastic kùtì (meditation huts) are scattered around the mountain, in caves and on cliffs. It is the coolheaded and quietly isolation of this wat that entices monks and mâe chii from all over the northeast to got and meditate here – many of them do thus on the summit, thus exist quietly and respectful up there.
This wat applied to exist the domain of the famed meditation primary Ajahn Juan, a disciple of the tearing Ajahn Man who died in 1949. Ajahn Juan died in a plane crash in 1980 along with several other highly revered timber monks who were flight to Bangkok for Queen Sirikit’s birthday celebration. A marble chedi containing his belongings and some bone relics sits below the mountain.
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