Wat Si Saket, Vientiane

Wat Si Saket, Vientiane (25 December, 2005)


Wat Si Saket (GPS: 17.96313, 102.61145), also written Vat Si Saket, is one of the most important temples in Vientiane, just across the street from the Presidential Palace.
Officially known as Wat Sisaketsata Sahatsaham, it is Vientiane's oldest temple still in its original form. Wat Si Saket was built by Chao Anuvong, the last king of the Lan Xang Kingdom, in 1818 in the early Bangkok style, when Laos was a vassal of Siam.
Probably due to its architectural style, when the Siamese attacked and destroyed Vientiane in 1828, Wat Si Saket was relatively spared, making it the oldest original temple in Vientiane today.
What makes Wat Si Saket particularly attractive among tourists today is the cloister that surrounds the central sim, or ordination hall. The interior walls contain small niches that house tiny silver and ceramic Buddha images, over 2000 all told. These Buddha images were made in Vientiane between the 16th and 19th Centuries.
Sitting on long shelves below the niches are over 300 mostly Lao-style Buddhas. They are made of wood, stone and bronze.
On the western side of the cloister is a pile of broken images, the result of the Siamese-Laotion war of 1828. Today Wat Si Saket is home to the head of the Lao sangha, the Buddhist order of monks.

The ordination hall, called sim, of Wat Si Saket. (25 December, 2005)


View of the roof of the ordination hall. (25 December, 2005)


View of the cloister that surrounds the sim. (25 December, 2005)


Spoils of war: broken images from the war of 1828. (25 December, 2005)


The signature of Wat Si Saket are the small niches on the walls of the cloister, numbering over 2000, each containing miniature Buddha images in silver and ceramic. (25 December, 2005)


This long wooden trough is in the form of a naga, or river-snake. It is used during the Lao New Year celebrations to pour cleansing water over the temple's Buddha images. (25 December, 2005)


This Burmese-style structure once hold holy manuscripts. During the 1828 war, the Siamese took the scriptures away, and now they are housed in Bangkok. (25 December, 2005)

Wat Si Saket on Google Street View

(Sep 2014)

Wat Si Saket is on the Map of Vientiane, Laos

 Latest updates on Penang Travel Tips

 Discover with Timothy YouTube Channel

 PG Food Channel

 Learn Penang Hokkien YouTube Channel

SojiMart Videos

 Share your travels and/or ask a travel-related question

Join the Penang Travel Tips Facebook Group to share photos, tips and anything related to your travels, or ask travel-related questions.

Map of Roads in Penang

Looking for information on Penang? Use this Map of Roads in Penang to zoom in on information about Penang, brought to you road by road.

Discover with Timothy

Let me take you to explore and discover Penang through my series of walking tours on YouTube. You may use these videos as your virtual tour guide. At the beginning of each video, I provide the starting point coordinates which you may key into your GPS, Google Maps or Waze, to be navigated to where I start the walk, and use the video as your virtual tour guide.

Disclaimer

Please use the information on this page as guidance only. The author endeavours to update the information on this page from time to time, but regrets any inaccuracies if there be any.

Latest from Discover with Timothy: Gurney Bay - what to see and do there

About this website

Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.

Robbie's Roadmap