Surprising Things You’d Only See in Thailand

Some Thai temples offer peaceful gardens. Wat Phai Rong Wua in Suphan Buri offers something considerably more unsettling. Its grounds include a Buddhist “hell garden,” where sculptures portray disturbing scenes of punishment and suffering in the afterlife alongside representations of heaven.

The frightening figures are not simply there to scare visitors. The Tourism Authority of Thailand explains that the heaven-and-hell displays were created to teach people to abstain from sinful behavior. It is essentially a morality lesson turned into a giant walk-through nightmare, making the consequences very difficult to ignore.