Both bot and viharn follow identical architectural styles, being rectangular buildings with sweeping multi-tiered roofs covered with glazed brown and green or blue tiles. Each end of the roof's peak terminates in a gilded finial known as a cho fa, or "sky tassel". A gracefully curved ornamentation, it looks like a slender bird's neck and head, and is generally believed to represent the mythical Garuda, half bird, half man.

Along with the bot and viharn, the most characteristic of temple structures is the chedi or stupa. Dominating the compound of a wat, this is a tall decorative spire constructed over relics of the Buddha, sacred texts or an image. Essentially they are two basic forms: bell-shaped and raised on square or round terraces of diminishing size, and tapering to a thin spire, or a round, finger-like tower. The latter, derived from Khmer architecture and symbolic of the mythical mountain abode of the gods, is known as a prang.

Other buildings in a temple compound can include a library for sacred texts, and a mondop. Traditionally the former was built on stilts over a pond to protect the fragile manuscripts from ants. The mondop is a square-shaped building with tapering roof enshrining some relic, often a Buddha footprint, a decorated stone impression far larger than lifesize. These, like the chedi, are not merely architectural features, they also serve as monuments in the true sense, objects to instruct and focus the mind.

Some larger wats may also have cloisters, open-sided galleries perhaps displaying rows of Buddha images, while bell towers and various pavilions can be additional features.

Wats further have a crematorium, identified by its needle-like chimney and, usually, a school for monks and perhaps also for lay children. These buildings are indicative of one of the traditional functions of a temple which extended beyond those of a place of worship and home to a religious community.

Rather like a medieval Christian church, the Thai temple was the focal point of every village. Unlike the church, however, it served far more than the community's spiritual needs. In the past, and still today in some rural areas, cultural life revolved around the wat which stood as social services centre, school, hospital, dispensary, hostelry, and village news, employment and information agency.

The most vivid illustration of the wat's community role and social focal point these days is the annual temple fair. Most wats continue the tradition of what are essentially fund-raising events, but also occasions for sanuk, having fun. At these times the normally quiet temple compound becomes filled with swings and roundabouts, sideshows, likay (folk opera) theatre shows and all the other typical fun-of-the-fair amusements, while the otherwise serene air is rent by loudspeakers blaring out raucous Thai music. In Bangkok, Wat Saket has the biggest of these affairs.

In a more serious vein, the temple has also been the storehouse of knowledge, sacred and profane (as with herbal medicine, for example) and monks, as one commentator has put it, "provided the vasty majority of the inhabitants of pre-modern Siam with the ultimate basis for making sense of the world."

Thailand's high literacy rate, both now and in the past, owes much to temple schools where youngsters are taught to read the sacred texts. On the day-to-day practical level abbots will also often take the lead in instigating community projects such as digging a village well.

Most fascinating from the visitor's point of view is the temple as art centre. Unlike the wat's other functions, this role was unwittingly assumed. Until the modern period all Thai art was religious art, it had no conscious aesthetic function and served purely didactic and devotional aims. Thus sculpture, painting and the minor arts, such as gilt on lacquer, mother-of-pearl inlay and woodcarving, found expression almost exclusively in temple decoration. More.