With Paul and Ava in town, I took a day to be a tourist, and we explored the big buddha that we spotted from the rooftop. Turns out it's part of a complete wat!

These guys ran the length of the steps leading up to a sala at the base of the statue.

All over the base of the statue were figurines, mostly of different people meditating.

These figurines were covering almost every flat horizontal surface of the statue, and we later discovered them individually in various places around the wat grounds, mostly on rocks and railings.

An interesting aspect of staying in Chonburi is that it is by no means a tourist town, so very few people understand English (and we didn't know any Thai). While we explored around the big buddha, one of the monks flagged me down and encouraged us to explore the wat grounds. In one of the various salas, there was a board with prayer papers stapled to it (click for full size).