A wat compound is typically organized around two principal halls that a visitor unfamiliar with Thai Buddhist architecture can easily confuse: the ubosot, or bot, is the ordination hall, ringed by a set of boundary stones called sema marking consecrated ground and used specifically for the ordination of monks and the most formally significant monastic ceremonies, while the vihara or wihan is a more general assembly hall, open to lay visitors for everyday worship and typically holding the compound's principal Buddha image. Only the ubosot carries the sema boundary stones, so their presence is the clearest architectural signal of which building holds this more restricted ceremonial status.
Alongside these halls, most wat compounds include one or more chedi, the Thai term for a stupa, often gilded and rising prominently above the surrounding roofline, enshrining relics or the ashes of respected teachers and serving as a focus for circumambulation distinct from the halls' more stationary forms of worship. Roofs across the compound are typically steep, multi tiered and elaborately decorated with finials called chofah at the gable ends, a regional stylistic signature shared with related temple architecture across mainland Southeast Asia. Monks' residential quarters, kutis, sit apart from these more public ceremonial buildings, preserving the same separation between communal devotional space and private monastic residence found in the South Asian vihara from which the whole compound ultimately descends.