Travelogue of An Armchair Traveller: Amazing Temple Built From Million Beer Bottles

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.