Wat Phumin and the Whisper of Love: Nan's Temple of Murals
Wat Phumin and the Whisper of Love: Nan’s Temple of Murals Some temples you visit for the building. Some you visit for what is painted on the walls. Wat Phumin, standing on Pha Kong Road in the middle of Nan’s old town, is the rare temple where the two are inseparable — a one-of-a-kind cruciform hall that faces all four directions at once, and inside it, wrapped around every wall, one of the great painted records of nineteenth-century life in northern Thailand. We run a small family condo business over in Patong, Phuket — about as far from Nan, in distance and in temperament, as Thailand gets. Phuket is sea, noise and high season. Nan is a quiet former royal capital in a green valley near the Lao border, and Wat Phumin is its beating heart. If you only see one thing in Nan, this is it. But see it slowly. The temple rewards people who give it an hour instead of ten minutes, and this guide is written for them: what the building is doing, which mural made it famous across Thailand, what...