A Chinatown temple of no established founding date that turned out, in 1955, to be holding five and a half centuries of solid gold under a skin of plaster.
วัดไตรมิตรวิทยารามวรวิหาร · Wat Traimit Witthayaram Worawihan
| Official name | วัดไตรมิตรวิทยารามวรวิหาร — Wat Traimit Witthayaram Worawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Talat Noi, Samphanthawong, Bangkok |
| Royal temple class | Second class royal temple, Worawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ชนิดวรวิหาร) Silpakorn University Central Library's temple register page, which states the grade in those words and gives as its own source the Department of Religious Affairs volume on royal monasteries published by the Ministry of Culture in 2008. We read the university's transcription, not the ministry volume, and the National Office of Buddhism register refused every request during research, so this grade rests on one source at one remove rather than on two independent registers. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Not established. |
Talat Noi, Samphanthawong, Bangkok
The exact location has not been confirmed yet.
Thai temple histories mix two different kinds of statement, and this guide keeps them apart. What a register, a gazette entry, an inscription or a dated royal act shows is one thing. What the chronicles and the temple itself hold is another, and it is worth telling as what it is.
So this temple has no established founding date and we do not print one. What can be dated is a naming in 1940, a hall in 1946 and a rank in 1956. The Fine Arts Department's monument register produced no entry for Wat Traimit in the searches we ran, and its map service could not be queried, so no ancient-monument registration is claimed here either.
For most of its life this was a small neighbourhood temple at the river end of Chinatown, known as Wat Sam Chin, the temple of the three Chinese. The register that carries its history is thin on the early part and honest about why: the founding is an account passed down, not a document. What the record can date begins in the twentieth century, with the ceremony that fixed the present name in February 1940 and with the rank of royal monastery granted in 1956.
The reason anyone outside the neighbourhood knows the temple is an accident of 25 May 1955. The register states the date plainly: the plaster casing on a large seated Buddha cracked away and the gold underneath appeared. The image had been moved to the temple from elsewhere and had been sitting under stucco long enough that nobody in living memory knew what it was. King Bhumibol Adulyadej gave it the name it now carries, Phra Phuttha Maha Suwanna Patimakon, in 1992.
Almost everything told about the image beyond that date belongs to a different order of claim. The register says the plaster was applied in the Ayutthaya period and that the image is not less than seven hundred years old, but it names no excavation, no inscription and no scholar behind either statement, and we found no dating study anywhere. The story that a crane dropped the image and cracked it appears in no acceptable source at all — only in travel writing repeating travel writing. Where it stood before it came here is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere we could accept.
The image now sits in the Phra Maha Mondop, a four-sided prasat-form building faced in white marble, raised as part of the celebrations for the King's eightieth birthday in December 2007. A Burapha University library record describes the structure — thirty metres across, sixty metres tall, reinforced concrete under the marble, a seven-tiered umbrella at the top. Inside it, below the image, the temple houses an exhibition on the Golden Buddha and the Yaowarat Chinatown Heritage Centre, which is the one place in the city that treats the Chinese-Thai settlement of this district as a subject in its own right.
The image itself: seated in the attitude of subduing Mara, 3.58 metres tall with a lap 3.13 metres wide by the register's measurements, in solid gold, on a raised platform at the top of the mondop. The register describes the style as Sukhothai but does not say who dated it, which is worth knowing before you read the label.
The Phra Maha Mondop, the white marble building that houses it. Four porches, seven tiers of umbrella at the apex, and the emblem of the King's eightieth-birthday celebration of December 2007 on the pediment — the building is younger than most of its visitors and does not pretend otherwise.
The Yaowarat Chinatown Heritage Centre inside the same building, and a separate exhibition on the image's history. These are the reason to allow more than twenty minutes here; the district's Chinese settlement is the real subject and the temple is the only institution presenting it.
The ordination hall of 1946, which is the temple's own building rather than a setting built for the image, and is where you get a sense of what Wat Sam Chin was before 1955.
This is a working place of worship for millions of people rather than an attraction, and it is treated as one at the gate. Where a figure below is blank, no source we are prepared to cite states it.
| Hours | Not established from an official source. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Not established from an official source. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | The temple stands at the Odeon Circle end of Yaowarat, a short walk from Hua Lamphong MRT. That is a matter of geography rather than a published access statement, and everything else about visiting is unverified below. |
Every temple reference repeats claims nobody has checked. These are the ones we went looking for and could not stand up, listed so you know exactly where this page stops.
Its age is not established. The Department of Religious Affairs register, as transcribed by Silpakorn University Central Library, calls it Sukhothai in style and not less than seven hundred years old, but names no scholar, excavation or inscription behind either statement, and we found no published dating study. What is dated is the moment the plaster casing cracked away and revealed the gold, 25 May 1955, and the King's bestowal of its formal name, Phra Phuttha Maha Suwanna Patimakon, in 1992.
We cannot say that it is. The account appears in a great deal of travel writing and in none of the registers, government pages, university transcriptions or museum records we consulted. Ten sites repeating each other is one unsourced claim repeated ten times, not ten sources. The register records the plaster cracking on 25 May 1955 and says nothing about how. If a documentary basis for the crane exists, it was not in anything we could open.
Wat Sam Chin, the temple of the three Chinese. The register carries the name change as record and the reason for the old name as oral account, marked in Thai as something told rather than documented: three Chinese friends are said to have built it as an offering of learning. The present name was fixed at a ceremony on 3 February 2482 in the Buddhist era, which is February 1940 under the calendar then in use.
Two exhibitions. One deals with the image itself and its rediscovery; the other is the Yaowarat Chinatown Heritage Centre, which covers the Chinese settlement of the district. Both sit inside the Phra Maha Mondop, the white marble prasat-form building raised for the King's eightieth birthday in December 2007. A Burapha University library record gives the building as thirty metres across and sixty metres tall, reinforced concrete faced in marble.
Before you go, read the guide to Buddhism and temple etiquette in Thailand — dress, footwear, where photography is not welcome and how to behave around monks. The rest of Bangkok’s temples are covered here too.
Every temple here sits in a place worth reading about on its own terms. The nationwide temple guide covers the other provinces to the same documentary standard as this page, and says on each one what the record establishes and what it does not.
If you are thinking about more than a visit: work out which Thai visa route fits your situation, and see what is available to rent and buy in residences across Thailand.
Every fact on this page is drawn from the sources above. Where they disagree, this page says so rather than choosing silently. Registrations, fees, hours and access change; confirm anything you are relying on with the authority concerned. BAANLYY LLC is a Nevada company and a listing portal, does not represent any temple, and offers no legal or religious advice.