Wat Klang Wiang — the navel of the old town

What the official record says

Where Wat Klang Wiang is

When was it founded — and what actually establishes that?

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.

No Royal Gazette announcement and no Fine Arts Department register entry for this monument could be read in this research, and no examination of the palm-leaf record or the brick has been published anywhere reachable here, so B.E. 1975 sits on the tradition side of the line even though the objects behind it are physical.

The history of Wat Klang Wiang

Wat Klang Wiang is where it is because of a measurement. The state records agree on the outline: a monastery stood here with a great red sandalwood tree at its center, venerated by the people around it, and the temple was known as Wat Chan Ta Lok after the tree. When the town was surveyed, the site turned out to lie at the exact center, and the city post was set up here. The name people use now — the temple in the middle of the walled town — is a description of the survey result rather than of the monastery.

The dating is unusually interesting for this province, because the objects behind it are physical. The Cultural Map Thailand record says the B.E. 1975 date rests on a palm-leaf manuscript and an inscribed ancient fired brick found at the site. That is the kind of evidence this guide waits for: not a chronicle, but two objects that could in principle be read and dated. Nobody reachable in this research has published a reading of either, so the year stays on the tradition side of the line — but it is the strongest candidate in Chiang Rai for a date that could be promoted, and a run that can reach the Fine Arts Department's own files should look for it.

The tree is gone and the two state accounts disagree about when and about what happened next. The cultural-environment register of the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning says that after Chiang Rai came out from under Burmese rule the city post was raised here in B.E. 2417, that a storm later brought the sandalwood tree down, that the name shortened to Wat Klang Wiang, and that the post standing now replaced the fallen one. The provincial tourism and sports office tells it differently: the storm that felled the tree came in B.E. 2446 and brought down the ordination hall and the vihara with it, and the present post was raised in B.E. 2535 after the old one had lain fallen for many years. The two cannot both be right about the post, and this guide prints both rather than choosing.

What stands today is therefore mostly a rebuilding, and the state sources say so. The ordination hall was put up again to Lanna design. Behind it, where the sandalwood tree stood, there is a chedi ringed with elephants. The post itself sits in a mondop the provincial office describes as pumpkin-shaped, with figures of the Thao Chatulokkaban, the four guardian kings of the directions, set around it to watch the navel of the town. The temple keeps an annual rite of offering flowers in bowls to the สะดือเวียง, which is the sort of thing that tells you a civic monument has become a devotional one.

What you actually see

The สะดือเวียง, the navel post of the walled town, in a mondop the provincial tourism office describes as pumpkin-shaped, with figures of the ท้าวจตุโลกบาล — the four guardian kings of the directions — set around it.

The chedi ringed with elephants behind the ordination hall, standing on the ground where the great red sandalwood tree that gave the temple its first name used to stand.

The ordination hall, rebuilt to Lanna design after the storm that the provincial office says brought both it and the vihara down.

The crossing itself: the corner of Thanon Uttarakit and Thanon Ratanaket, which a survey of the town found to be its exact center — the reason the post is here and not somewhere else.

Visiting: hours, admission, dress and photography

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.

What we could not establish

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.

• The year of the city post. The cultural-environment register gives B.E. 2417 and the provincial tourism and sports office gives B.E. 2535 for the post now standing, with the register treating the present post as a replacement for a fallen one. Two state bodies, two centuries apart; unresolved.
• The storm. The provincial office dates it to B.E. 2446 and says it brought down the ordination hall and the vihara as well as the tree. The register mentions the storm without a year. Nothing else read here dates it.
• B.E. 1975 and the objects behind it. A palm-leaf record and an inscribed fired brick are named as the evidence by the Cultural Map Thailand record, and neither has been published, read or dated anywhere reachable in this research.
• The coordinate. The cultural-environment register gives 19.9107280, 99.8324740 and the Cultural Map Thailand record gives 19.9116871, 99.8309589 — about a hundred and seventy meters apart, both inside Tambon Wiang. The register's point is used here because it is the state register.
• Registration as a national ancient monument. Unread, as for every temple in this province.

Wat Klang Wiang: common questions

Where to go from here

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.