Beautiful pictures.

I highly doubt it.

Beef Cake wrote on 14^th Feb, 2013 at 11:06pm:


A realist

The paint covering the That Luang stupa is made to look like gold, but if you look at it up close the paint on it is a flat yellow paint, not metallic at all. If you look at it up close in the compound you would see that the paint was not even applied well and there are patches that were not painted consistently. It is unlike the Shwedagon stupa in Burma which is gilded, covered in metallic gold.  The effect is really much more refined.

Powerwashing and then repainting with 'metallic luster' paints should revitalize the stupa tremendously !

Laosnow wrote on 16^th Feb, 2013 at 12:25am:

Never heard that before.

Beef Cake wrote on 16^th Feb, 2013 at 7:56pm:

Using Google, I've seen claims that the stupa contains the Buddha's pelvic bone, collar bone or breast bone.

"Pha That Luang according to the Lao people was originally built as a Hindu temple in the 3rd century. Buddhist missionaries from the Mauryan Empire are believed to have been sent by the Emperor Ashoka, including Bury Chan or Praya Chanthabury Pasithisak and five Arahata monks who brought a holy relic (believed to be the breast bone) of Lord Buddha to the stupa."

Or:

"The Cham period was the second wave of Buddhism in Laos. Under the patronage of Emperor Ashokka of India, the venerable monks Sona and Outala and five scholars brought a fragment of what was believed to be a piece of the pelvic bone of Lord Buddha to Vientiane in 218 BC, where it was kept in the obelisk at Phu Luang hill. "