Travelogue of An Armchair Traveller: 01-Nov-2011

Google Earth Community - Fun and Games

Google Earth Community is full of information which ranges from, but not limited to, history, geography, nature, environment, architecture, military, transportation, social / religious beliefs, festivals, huge, unique, bizarre items, current happenings etc etc.

My favourite section in the Community is "Fun and Games" - in which members post riddles and puzzles on almost all subjects and generally give hints for searching and locating the relevant places and or events on Google Earth. I have made several hundred posts in this forum and must have solved about the same number, though several were beyond my grasp. Believe me it is not easy to solve these riddles - Finding the answer is 90% perspiration (research) and 10% inspiration but it is pure 100% joy and sense of exhilaration.

This forum provides a stimulus to my brain and keeps it active. I strongly recommend this for those who have time and penchant for solving puzzles, but a word of warning – it is highly addictive.

My travels around the World are not limited to Fun and Games only, however many of the places being covered in this travelogue were found as a result of my researches for making posts in Fun and Games or trying to solve the riddles given therein.

The town of Khun Han in Sisaket province, Thailand boasts of a unique temple built using more than one million (as per some sources about 1.5 million) empty beer bottles.

The temple officially called Wat (meaning Temple) Pa Maha Chedi Kaew is also known as "Wat Lan Kuad" - Million Bottle Temple.

The temple was born out of a simple idea of local Buddhist monks who wanted to utilise the discarded empty beer bottles littered all over the town. In 1984 they started collecting the empties and also encouraged the local population to bring in the empty bottles. Work on the temple was started once they had collected one million bottles.

The result was a remarkably colourful structure made mainly with green (Heineken) and brown (Chang Beer) bottles. Entire structure including the floors were built with bottles embedded in cement mortar. The wall murals/ decorations were made from the bottle caps, however out of respect for the Deity, the statue of Buddha was not made from the recycled bottles.

The monks didn’t stop once the main temple was completed and they continued to collect empty bottles to make other buildings in the complex with glass bottles - the shelters, the water tower, monks' quarters, visitors' rooms, crematorium, toilets etc.

To the monks it is a continuous process and they say the more bottles they get the more they will build.

Using the recycled bottles is not only eco-friendly but also provides natural lighting and ease of maintenance. The glass doesn’t fade and is easy to wash as compared to normal mortar.