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1 Aug, 2017

Malaysia: Wat Charok Padang Continues to Attract Tourists

Malaysia, SIK, 27 July 2017, (NNN-Bernama) — A bottle-shaped Buddhist temple, Wat Charok Padang, here continues to attract tourists who came to see the First Bottle-Made Temple in Malaysia as listed in the Malaysia Book of Records.

The temple, which was inspired from Wat Pa Maha Kaew or the Temple of Million Bottles in Sisaket, Southern Thailand, has been a major tourist attraction as some parts of the building were made of 100,000 glass bottles.

What’s more interesting is that the green glass bottles were arranged so neatly to make up the 9m-tall bottle-shaped building.

“The bottle-shaped temple also has a special space underneath it…it can release water from the upper water storage tank, which many Buddhist devotees believe can help them remove or get rid of bad luck,” said a monk Chaleen Rajagobal, 26.

Apart from that, the wall and roof of an adjacent single-storey building, which houses 92 prayer bells, were also made of glass bottles, and so as part of the fences.

“We began with constructing the external frame of the building before the glass bottles were attached to the outside of the wall using cement,” he said.

The temple that was built in 1999 was recognised as the ‘First Bottle-Made Temple’ by the Malaysia Book of Records in 2001.

Chaleen said the idea to build the glass bottles temple was mooted by the temple’s chief monk Phrcaathikan Nuemarutthammo Nuemchaiwan in the 1990s, and the bottle-collecting campaign was launched in 1999.

“Many villagers donated the glass bottles to build the temple…and even helped to complete the temple,” he said, adding that RM400,000 was allocated to build to temple.