The Bodhi Tree of Wat Saket

Two monks left Bangkok on a mission from King Rama II and came back three years later with tree cuttings instead of relics. In 1814, Phra Achan Dee and Phra Achan Thep returned from Sri Lanka after studying at Anuradhapura, the city that has kept an unbroken line of Bodhi trees since a cutting from Bodh Gaya arrived there in the third century BC. Of the three saplings they carried home, the king had one planted at Wat Saket in 1818, at Lan Pho directly in front of the ordination hall, where it has stood ever since below the temple's later, far more famous addition: an 80 metre artificial hill capped in gold that Rama III would not begin building for another decade. The tree predates the Golden Mount that now draws every visitor's eye upward and past it. Two centuries on, it is genuinely struggling. Competing vegetation and fungal pressure have weakened the trunk enough that the temple launched a public restoration campaign timed to Makha Bucha 2026, asking Buddhists to help nurse a 208-year-old living relic back to health rather than simply photograph the hill behind it. Free to see, no ticket required beyond the small fee charged only for the climb up the Mount itself.