A twenty-first-century hillside temple north of Chiang Rai town whose nine-tier chedi mixes Chinese, Thai and Burmese forms, and whose white Guan Yin figure — about seventy-nine metres, with a lift inside — is visible for miles.
วัดห้วยปลากั้ง · Wat Huai Pla Kang
| Official name | วัดห้วยปลากั้ง — Wat Huai Pla Kang |
|---|---|
| Where | Mae Yao, Mueang Chiang Rai, Chiang Rai |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Not established. |
Mae Yao, Mueang Chiang Rai, Chiang Rai
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.
Nothing here is old and the temple does not pretend otherwise. The buildings are all of this century, and the reason to come is what has been built rather than what has survived. The one fact this page could not settle is the address: the same official page gives Rim Kok in its prose and Mae Yao in its address block.
Wat Huai Pla Kang stands on a hill a few kilometres north of Chiang Rai town, and it is the clearest example in the province of a temple whose history is entirely administrative. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's record gives the sequence plainly: a monastic settlement from 2001, then formal recognition as a wat by the National Office of Buddhism on 24 July 2009 under the name it carries now, with Phra Achan Phop Chok Tissawaso as first abbot. Eighteen years later it is one of the most visited religious sites in northern Thailand.
What makes it worth a serious look is that it is unembarrassed about being a Thai-Chinese temple in a Thai-Chinese province. Chiang Rai sits at the top of a trade route that has carried Yunnanese, Hokkien and Teochew families into northern Thailand for generations, and the devotional life of those families runs through Guan Yin — Phra Mae Kuan Im, the bodhisattva of compassion — as much as through the Theravada Sangha. This temple builds for both without apology, and the architecture says so before anyone explains it.
The nine-tier Phop Chok Dhamma Chedi is the argument in built form. The tourism authority's description of it is worth reading as a list of deliberate borrowings: each tier is roofed in a Chinese manner with dragon ornament; the top of the tower is a bell-shaped chedi of a recognisably Thai kind; the finial above that is Burmese in style; and the interiors of the tiers are decorated in a European manner around Buddha images on every floor, with a Guan Yin figure carved in fragrant wood inside the chedi itself. A purist would call it a collision. It is more accurately a map of who actually worships here.
Above the chedi, on the crown of the hill, stands the white Guan Yin figure that most people know the place by — about seventy-nine metres, which the tourism authority calls the tallest in Thailand — with a lift running up inside it to a viewing level that looks back down over the temple and out across the Kok river valley. Between the two is a white stucco ordination hall reached by naga staircases, with a white principal image inside. The whole compound is designed to be climbed rather than walked through, and the climb is the point.
Phop Chok Dhamma Chedi: nine tiers, each roofed in a Chinese manner with dragon ornament, carrying a bell-shaped Thai chedi at the top under a Burmese-style finial, with Buddha images on every floor and a Guan Yin carved in fragrant wood inside the chedi.
The Guan Yin figure on the hilltop — about seventy-nine metres of white sculpture, which the Tourism Authority of Thailand describes as the tallest in Thailand — with a lift inside it to a viewing level, running 07.00 to 18.00 while the temple itself stays open until 21.00.
The white stucco ordination hall, approached up naga staircases, with a white principal Buddha image inside it.
The view the site is arranged around: the Kok river valley north of Chiang Rai town, seen from inside the Guan Yin and from the upper tiers of the chedi.
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 | The Tourism Authority of Thailand gives daily 07.00–21.00, with the lift inside the Guan Yin figure running 07.00–18.00. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: no rate is published. Foreign visitors: 40 baht. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Mae Yao, Mueang Chiang Rai 57100, on a hillside a few kilometres north of the town centre. The tourism authority gives the temple's telephone numbers as +66 5315 0274 and +66 8 6620 0647, and lists parking on site. |
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.
It is a twenty-first-century temple. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's record states that the community was established as a monastic settlement in 2001 and was recognised as a wat by the National Office of Buddhism on 24 July 2009, under the name Wat Huai Pla Kang, with Phra Achan Phop Chok Tissawaso as its first abbot. That makes its founding better dated than almost any old temple in this province, because it is an administrative act rather than a chronicle.
Because northern Thailand's devotional life is not only Theravada. Chiang Rai sits on trade routes that have brought Yunnanese, Hokkien and Teochew families into the region for generations, and Guan Yin — Phra Mae Kuan Im, the bodhisattva of compassion — is central to their practice. Wat Huai Pla Kang builds for that congregation as well as for the Thai Sangha, which is why its chedi carries Chinese roofs, a Thai bell chedi and a Burmese finial on one tower.
Yes. The tourism authority's record says a lift runs up inside the sculpture to a viewing level that looks out over the temple and the surrounding valley. The lift operates from 07.00 to 18.00 while the temple grounds stay open until 21.00, so an evening visit will get you the chedi and the ordination hall but not the view from inside the figure. Plan around the earlier closing.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand publishes an entrance fee of 40 baht, listed in its structured fields as 40 baht for a foreign adult and 40 baht for a foreign child. It publishes no separate figure for Thai nationals, and no other official source consulted in this research states one, so this guide leaves the Thai rate blank rather than assuming that entry is free.
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 Chiang Rai’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.