A third-class royal monastery in the old quarter of Chiang Rai, named after an image that went back to Chiang Mai six hundred years ago, and carrying a set of ordination-hall doors designed by the National Artist Thawan Duchanee.
วัดพระสิงห์ · Wat Phra Singh
| Official name | วัดพระสิงห์ — Wat Phra Singh |
|---|---|
| Where | Wiang, Mueang Chiang Rai, Chiang Rai |
| Royal temple class | Third class royal temple, Saman (ชั้นตรี ชนิดสามัญ) The National Office of Buddhism's Chiang Rai provincial office gives the date of elevation — สถาปนาขึ้นเป็นพระอารามหลวง เมื่อวันที่ ๒๒ มีนาคม พุทธศักราช ๒๕๓๖ — without naming the grade. The grade itself is taken from the Sangha Supreme Council's own resolution index, where the appointment records for this temple read วัดพระสิงห์ พระอารามหลวง ชั้นตรี ชนิดสามัญ ตำบลเวียง อำเภอเมืองเชียงราย. The resolution documents refused every request in this run, so the wording comes from the council's index rather than from a document opened at source, and this note says so rather than hiding it. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Not established. |
Wiang, 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.
The two sides do not sit comfortably together and the page does not force them. B.E. 1928 converts to 1385, inside the generation the legend describes; but the principal image itself is dated by the National Office of Buddhism to the twenty-first Buddhist century, which is the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries CE, while the tourism authority attributes that same image to Chao Maha Phrom a hundred and more years earlier. One state page therefore contains both a date and an attribution that cannot both hold. Neither is treated here as settled.
Chiang Rai's Wat Phra Singh is the other of the province's two royal monasteries, a few hundred metres from Wat Phra Kaeo in the same old quarter, at 486/2 Tha Luang Road in Tambon Wiang. It is also, reliably, the temple that gets confused with a different and much grander one: Chiang Mai has a Wat Phra Singh of the first class, and the confusion runs deep enough that the Tourism Authority of Thailand's own page for the Chiang Rai temple opens by placing it on Tha Phae Road, which is a Chiang Mai street, before giving a Chiang Rai address in its own data block a few lines later.
The temple's name belongs to an image rather than to a place. Phra Phuttha Sihing — the Sihing Buddha, Phra Singh for short — is one of the most copied images in Thai Buddhism, and the chronicle tradition has it moving north from Kamphaeng Phet with Chao Maha Phrom, the younger brother of the Chiang Mai king Kue Na, and then coming up to Chiang Rai on loan so that replicas could be cast from it. When the Chiang Mai succession passed over Chao Maha Phrom and his attempt on the throne failed, the original went back down the road. What Chiang Rai kept was a copy, and the temple's name.
The National Office of Buddhism's Chiang Rai office describes the image that stands here now as Phra Phuttha Sihing, Phra Singh Nueng, a Lanna work of the twenty-first Buddhist century in the attitude of subduing Mara. The tourism authority describes the same image as a gold figure with a lap thirty-seven centimetres wide and a height of sixty-six centimetres, commissioned by Chao Maha Phrom himself. Those two descriptions are separated by more than a century of art history and this guide does not pretend to reconcile them; what both agree on is that the object of devotion in the Phra Singh hall is a Lanna replica and that its original is elsewhere.
The most striking thing in the temple is not medieval at all. The panels of the ordination-hall doors were designed by Thawan Duchanee — the Chiang Rai painter, National Artist in visual arts, whose Baan Dam is the black counterweight to Chalermchai Kositpipat's white temple down the road — on the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire, and were carved by Sala Amnuai Bua-ngam. The temple also keeps a replica of the Buddha's footprint incised on a stone slab, which the tourism authority reports as being held to date from the reign of King Mangrai, the founder of the city. That belief is worth reporting as a belief; nothing read in this run dates the slab.
The ordination-hall door panels designed by Thawan Duchanee on the theme of the four elements — earth, water, wind and fire — and carved by Sala Amnuai Bua-ngam. This is the reason to come even if you have seen a hundred Lanna wihan.
The Phra Singh image in its hall: a Lanna replica in the attitude of subduing Mara, described by the National Office of Buddhism as a work of the twenty-first Buddhist century and by the tourism authority as a gold figure with a thirty-seven-centimetre lap and a height of sixty-six centimetres.
The stone slab carrying a replica of the Buddha's footprint, which the tourism authority reports as being held to date from King Mangrai's reign.
The setting itself: a compact working royal monastery inside the old wall of Chiang Rai, on Tha Luang Road, within walking distance of Wat Phra Kaeo — the two royal temples of the province are a ten-minute stroll apart.
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's attraction page gives daily 06.00–18.30. |
|---|---|
| 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 | 486/2 Tha Luang Road, Tambon Wiang, Mueang Chiang Rai 57000, in the old quarter about ten minutes' walk from Wat Phra Kaeo. The tourism authority gives the temple's telephone numbers as +66 5371 1735 and +66 5374 4523. |
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.
No. There are two, in two provinces, and they are not the same temple or even the same rank. Chiang Mai's Wat Phra Singh is a first-class royal monastery of the Woramahawihan rank and holds a Phra Phuttha Sihing in its Wihan Lai Kham. Chiang Rai's is a third-class royal monastery of the ordinary kind on Tha Luang Road in Tambon Wiang. Search results, and at least one official tourism page, mix them constantly.
Not established. The National Office of Buddhism's Chiang Rai provincial office writes that it is supposed to have been built around B.E. 1928, using the Thai word for a supposition, and connects it with the time of Phraya Maha Phrom. No inscription, gazette entry or excavation report reachable in this research fixes a year. Any source that gives you a confident single founding date for this temple is going further than the state's own religious administration will.
Because the tradition says the image was only ever on loan. The chronicle account relayed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand has Chao Maha Phrom bringing Phra Phuttha Sihing north from Kamphaeng Phet and later borrowing it up to Chiang Rai so replicas could be cast, and has it returning to Chiang Mai after his failed bid for that city's throne. Chiang Rai kept a copy and the name, which is a common enough pattern with this particular image.
The panels of the ordination hall were designed by Thawan Duchanee, the Chiang Rai painter and National Artist in visual arts whose Baan Dam museum is on the other side of town, on the theme of the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire, and were carved by Sala Amnuai Bua-ngam. They are the strongest single reason to walk into this temple rather than past it, and they are contemporary work in an old setting.
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.