CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
Wat U Mong is seven hundred years old. The builders carved elaborately frescoed tunnels into an artificial hill, constructed a huge stupa and turned it into one of the most elaborate temple complexes in Northern Thailand.

Then they abandoned it, possibly as early as 1487. Wat U Mong sat rotting in the forest for almost five hundred years before anybody bothered to restore it in 1948, and a significant number of monks didn’t move back in until 2003.

But the coolest thing about U Mong is this pile of derelict Buddha statues. A monk who stayed here in the late sixties traveled around Thailand collecting them, and I guess everyone just humored him with a little plaque.

Maybe I can find a temple that hasn’t been restored…