Cathy and Gary's South East Asia Travel Pages
WAT PHRA NANG SANG PHUKET
Wat Phra Nang Sang is Phuket’s oldest Temple with a history going back over 500 years. It is sometimes called the messy Temple due to the huge number of statues in the grounds and I am happy to say there is even more there now from when I visited a few years ago.
I really enjoyed looking through here, such an interesting history and so much to see.
In 1785 the grounds in front of the Temple were used as a battlefield between locals and the invading Burmese and legend says that Lady Luad Khao who was the consort of the ruler of Nakhon Si Thammarat was condemned to death for supposedly having an affair.
Before her death, she asked to pay her last worship to the Lord Buddha relics in Sri Lanka. It was upon her return she built the Temple and this is how the name came to be, Phra Nang Sang means built by Royal Lady.
When she was executed a miracle happened, her blood was white, and so she became known as the Lady of White Blood Phra Nang Luad Khao. She always maintained her innocence and the fact her blood flowed white proves this.
Also at Wat Phra Nang Sang are 3 ancient tin Buddha images which are called Phra Nai Pung (Abdomen Buddha Image) or Phra Sam Kasat (Three King Buddha Image). The images were all in the abdomens of normal looking Buddha statues to hide them from the Burmese.
There are also statues of Lady Chan and Lady Mook who are Phuket’s heroines and once they were assigned their Royal titles of Thao Thepkrasatri and Thao Srisunthon they came to Wat Phra Nang Sang to pay their respects the Buddha image.
There is just so much to see at this Temple on Thepkasattri Rd Thalang and it is very easy to spend a couple of hours here.
Wat Phra Nang Sang is north of the Heroines Monument on the left side of Thepkasathri Rd just before the turn off to Surin.
