Pra Tong Temple

Located north of Thalang and about 20 km from Phuket Town, Wat Pra Tong is the oldest temple on the island and was created when Thalang was still Phuket's capital.

The shrine encloses a golden statue of Buddha that is said to have emerged from beneath the ground long ago. The extraordinary legend is of a young boy who tied up his buffalo to what he thought was a post. Unfortunately, after doing so, he fell down in agony and died. His father dreamed that the reason his son had died was because he had committed the sin of tying a filthy buffalo to a sacred object: that what the boy thought was a post was in reality the golden peak of the Buddha's conical cap. He told his neighbors about the dream and they went out to excavate the post and discovered it was the decorative topknot of a buried golden Buddha. They were able to unearth no more than the upper part of the image, over which they constructed the present chapel. Burmese invaders attempted to remove the image in 1785 but failed when vicious hornets swarmed and stung them.

After this the villagers decided to protect their miraculous statue by covering the part that stuck up from the ground with a plaster cast of Buddha's head and shoulder's, which is the way it is today.

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