Wat Pariwat Ratchasongkram
Buddhist temple where a thirty-centimetre David Beckham statue shares a gold frieze with garudas and pop-culture icons.
Location
About this audio guide
At Wat Pariwat Ratchasongkram in Bangkok, a gold-plated David Beckham in his Manchester United kit stands beside garudas on the base of the main Buddha image, carved in by a devoted fan in 1999 with the abbot's blessing. The guide tours the temple's other unlikely company on the ordination hall walls, from Batman and Popeye to Falcor and Che Guevara, and traces the building's own path from an Ayutthaya-era ruin to a modern rebuild. Look closely along the walls for the rest of the cast.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Yannawa Temple
Buddhist temple whose centrepiece is a concrete Chinese junk over forty metres long, built by Rama III to preserve the vessel's image.
Wat Ratchabophit
Royal Buddhist temple fusing Thai spires with Victorian Gothic interiors, stained glass, and a royal cemetery of thirty-four monuments.
Wat Trai Mit Witthayaram Worawihan
Buddhist temple housing the world's largest solid gold Buddha, hidden under plaster for two centuries.
Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan
Riverside Buddhist temple whose soaring prang is encrusted with thousands of Chinese porcelain fragments.
Wat Intharawihan
Thirty-two-metre standing Buddha — the golden "Luang Pho To" — built over sixty years and completed in nineteen twenty-seven.
Wat Mangkon Kamalawat (Wat Leng Noei Yi)
Bangkok's most revered Chinese Buddhist temple, blending Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian shrines since the eighteen seventies.