It’s Monday the 13th today, and I managed to get out on the motorbike and into the countryside again. Serendipitous mistakes. I had wanted to go to another temple, days ago on the 8th, but was met with a wall of rain as I headed south. I decided to make my way to that aforementioned temple (familiar, having been there previously). However, I had mistakenly set my location on Google Maps. It happens, names are similar, trips years apart, and photos on the app are often inaccurate. As I approached, I saw this temple atop the mountain ridge and thought to myself “I need to find out where that is and get there.” It’s not as simple as you think, you can’t just make your way towards it. Its jungle here, there’s no guarantee a road leading that direction will make a sharp turn elsewhere. Yet I found myself getting closer and closer to this temple, and I began doubting myself. I wondered if there was repairs being done on the chedi, hence the crane. No, this was a completely different temple and I have never seen anything like this in my life before.

I have never experienced a temple this monolithic, as large does not begin to describe it. For it to be situated atop the Phu Phan mountain ridge, overlooking the Isaan planes, was breath taking even in it’s unfinished form. I have been to plenty of temples, and all of the popular ones. I can hear armchair experts typing “but x and x is bigger.” In size perhaps, but not in enormity. There is no way for me to accurately describe or show you the sense of scale this temple leaves oneself with. I could not (even if I tried) find a better counterpoint to yesterday’s dragon statue. I am not joking you when I say there was hundreds upon hundreds of marble slabs, three inch thick and taller than me, row upon row. This dichotomy — this dissonance — is unfathomable to me. Isaan is one of the poorest places in the developed world, and yet here I am in the jungle surrounded by gestating opulence. I would have believed you if I was told it was commissioned by Rockefeller himself.

Now, how exactly is this temple a counterpoint to yesterday’s dragon? The similarities seem to outweigh any differences… on the surface. The dragon, as we discussed, is a by-product of capitalising on the idea of a landmark. This, well this will be a landmark, and that is a total by-product of its existence. The dragon was made by hand, and by design, let us not mistake it for what it is. But this this is the inverse in its concept, and overwhelmingly more difficult to execute. Where the dragon has taken a year from ideation to completion, the temple is in its fourteenth year and another half-decade to go. Each of the hundreds of marble spindles takes a whole day for a single artisan, and there are hundreds to be made still. This makes Grand Designs look like Lego.

I’m not easy to impress, and I am impressed. If my whole ethos was made material, this temple could well be its embodiment. As I talked to the monks, he told me that the issue wasn’t money, labour, or time. It was materials. And it was a strict adherence to sequence, no running before they can walk. They cannot proceed to B before A is perfect. What surprised me most (though I cannot say why it came as a surprise) was when he said that these things simply are difficult. That nothing worthwhile, isn’t. Perhaps it was a surprise to hear it spoken to me, instead of me having to remind legacy houses of the fact. For isn’t it the same for my work? I could show you a thousand coffees and cats, but how often do you get to see what I am showing you today? That doesn’t come from anything but time, effort and intent intersecting subject. Just as the belief, the funding, the labour, all matters little until they are given that marble. Unlike this temple though, money certainly is the deciding factor for me. If I work, then I’m not documenting. If I am not documenting, then who is? Who cares enough, has the ability, and the endurance to see this through? Yes, I think the reason I stand in awe at this temple is due to kinship.