Wat Metta Dharma Bodhiyan

You're visiting a building site, and that's the point. This Chinese-style Mahayana temple in the hills outside Kanchanaburi is partway through an enormous expansion, including a Buddha statue that's meant to reach 165 metres. Right now you'll see sculptures waiting in holding areas, structures half-risen, and the whole vision laid out in pieces. Come back in a decade and it'll be a different place.

What's already finished justifies the trip on its own. The 12-metre carved wooden Thousand-Hand Guanyin is the centrepiece, and the detail on it is the kind of thing you stand in front of for a while without saying much. Beyond that there are over a hundred more wooden Guanyin figures, and dragons coiling around the pillars in traditional Chinese carving. Reviewers keep using words like peaceful, which is impressive given the diggers.

It's not a tidy site. Parking is a free-for-all, so take whatever gap you find and walk. Go early if you want the grounds mostly to yourself.