Buddha Mountain - Khao Chi Chan

This guide to Buddha Mountain in Pattaya starts with bulldozers stripping the cliff for airbase runways through the 1960s and 70s, leaving bare grey rock by the time quarrying stopped in 1976. It follows the 1995 request to spare the mountain further blasting and the 1996 decision to mark the King's fiftieth coronation anniversary by carving his tribute into the wound itself, using a method nobody had tried on a monument before. A team from the Phra Chomklao Technology Institute aimed a guided laser at the cliff face over two nights in 1996.