Visiting the Mountain Buddha Temple Ao Nang | Thailand

I hate to use the term ‘hidden gem’ but it honestly feels like most people that visit Ao Nang in Thailand don’t even know that the Mountain Buddha Temple exists! It’s approximately a 40 minute walk from Ao Nang Beach, along the main road. During my visit I was the only person there until another person came just as I was leaving! Here’s what to expect when visiting!

Mountain Buddha Temple Ao Nang

Also known as Guan Yin Bodhisattva Mountain, the Mountain Buddha Temple is 3km from Ao Nang Beach and is free to visit. For those that climb roughly 250 steps to the top are treated to some lovely views of the surrounding area.

Views of Ao Nang Mountain Buddha Temple — Views of Ao Nang from Mountain Buddha Temple

There’s not a huge amount of information online or displayed at the temple, so if anyone has any more information I would love to find out and learn about it! Several of the signs are displayed in Thai and Chinese. However, my Google Translate struggled to translate the Thai and the Chinese translation didn’t make much sense grammatically!

After doing some personal research, I have tried to piece together information, but I’m by no means an expert of Buddhism. Please forgive me if I have said something incorrect, I am happy to make adjustments if I find out otherwise.

GuanYin

Not to be confused with more well-known Tiger Cave Temple in Krabi, the Guan Yin Bodhisattva Mountain Temple is a type of shrine built to honour Guan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of compassion. They are often depicted with 1000 arms/hands the represent alleviate suffering.

Statues & Sculptures

When visiting Mountain Buddha Temple, there is a very steep and narrow set of stairs running up the middle. They are quite tricky to walk up. Once you reach the top of the first set, head to the left hand side and you’ll find an easier set leading up between the trees and the side of the shrine. You can access each level from these, so you won’t miss anything.

Mountain Buddha Temple Ao Nang steps — Easier steps to the left of Mountain Buddha Temple

There is SO MUCH gold. Right at the very top is a giant golden Buddha statue. You can’t get right to this one though. The highest level has very life-like looking statues of 4 monks in their traditional robes. This is where you’ll also see the best views across Ao Nang.

There are smaller versions of Buddha on some of the other levels, along with dragons, large white elephants and other figures from buddhism and Chinese Mythology. One sculpture about half way up is of a dragon turtle. This is used in Feng Shui and is a symbol of ancient wisdom.

Spirit Houses

In Thailand, you’ll often see lots of bottles of drinks with straws left at bottoms of shrines and ‘Spirit houses‘ (that you’ll see in front of many buildings). It is believed that to ‘appease’ the spirits, you should provide them with snacks.

Popular offerings are water, and especially red Fanta. The straws are then pointed towards them to make it easier for the spirits to drink.

Dharma Wheel

At the bottom of the Ao Nang Mountain Buddha Temple is what I believe to be a type of large Dharma Wheel. This symbolises the Buddha’s teachings. The 8 spokes surround the Yin Yan symbol represent the ‘Path to Enlightenment‘. This is followed by 12 spokes which symbolise the ‘Twelve Links of Dependent Origination‘.

I then got a bit confused because the outside of the wheel had 27 spokes. My Google Translate listed them as ‘Siameses’, but I can’t find anything that references this with a 27. There are 27 ‘Nakshatras’ in Hindu astrology, alternatively 24 spokes display the ‘twenty-four ideal qualities of a follower of Buddhism’.

I have attached an image below to show the translation of the ’18th Siamese’. The whole wheel does rotate if you were interested in reading each one.

Ao Nang Dharma Wheel 18th — Google Translation from the Dharma Wheel

Tips For Visiting

If you didn’t want to walk, you could get a Tuk Tuk from Ao Nang. There is a path most of the way. Only the last section requires walking alongside of the edge of the road, but this is quite a wide area.

Ao Nang Mountain Buddha Temple Krabi Thailand — Things to do near Ao Nang Beach: Mountain Buddha Temple

At the Mountain Buddha Temple, there are no facilities, such as toilets. However there is a large supermarket along the main road, and you’ll pass local street food vendors if you needed food or drinks. I just took a bottle of water and this was fine.

It took me 40 minutes in each direction and then I was exploring the temple for around 20 minutes. So my total time spent visiting was approximately 1hr 40.

Elephants at Mountain Buddha Temple Ao Nang — Road back to Ao Nang. Go down this road and turn left.

I also did my walk ‘early’ in the morning, just after breakfast, before it got too hot. Plus it was cloudy and a little drizzly, which helped keep the temperature down. The walk from Ao Nang is quite flat, but there are steep stairs to climb if you did want to go to the top!