A twentieth-century village monastery that happens to sit beside Khuan Luk Pat — the bead mound that identified Khlong Thom as an early-historic port trading glass beads with India, and whose finds fill the museum in the temple grounds.
วัดคลองท่อม · Wat Khlong Thom
| Official name | วัดคลองท่อม — Wat Khlong Thom |
|---|---|
| Where | Khlong Thom Tai, Khlong Thom, Krabi |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Not established. |
Khlong Thom Tai, Khlong Thom, Krabi
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 temple and the mound are two different ages and this page keeps them apart. The monastery is a twentieth-century village foundation. The archaeological deposit behind it is early-historic, and the Fine Arts Department places Khlong Thom as a glass-bead manufacturing and trading centre in roughly the sixth to ninth Buddhist centuries.
Wat Khlong Thom is an ordinary village temple with an extraordinary back garden. The Krabi provincial office of the National Office of Buddhism records that monastic quarters were first built on the site in B.E. 2451 (1908) by a local headman and residents, that a resident community became permanent from B.E. 2498 (1955) under Phra Sawat Kantasampho, who had twenty-four monks with him in his first rains retreat, and that the temple's ordination boundary was granted on 10 July B.E. 2504 (1961). The same office records the temple's land as roughly 27 rai 3 ngan 67 square wa, with a further cremation ground of 54 rai 2 ngan 13 square wa. None of that is remarkable. What is behind the temple is.
Immediately behind the compound is Khuan Luk Pat — literally the bead mound. The Fine Arts Department excavated it, and its own published account of the work gives the dates precisely: 1 to 15 September B.E. 2523 (1980), with beads recovered at layer fifteen, between two hundred and two hundred and forty centimetres down. What came out were Indo-Pacific beads, the small drawn-glass beads in orange, green, red and blue that were made by drawing molten glass into a tube and cutting it into lengths. The department describes them as trade-wind beads and sets Khlong Thom as a centre of glass bead manufacture and trade in roughly the sixth to ninth Buddhist centuries, with the type itself spreading from around the fifth.
The significance of that is easy to understate. It means Khlong Thom was not a place that received Indian goods but a place that made them, on the Andaman side of the peninsula, at the point where a trader crossing from the Bay of Bengal would come ashore before the overland portage to the Gulf. The Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre describes the site as an early-historic settlement functioning both as a bead-making centre and as an important maritime trading port roughly two thousand to one thousand years ago, and lists among the finds mosaic glass beads with human faces worked into them — locally called sun-god beads — along with agate, quartz, carnelian and gold beads, pottery, stone tools, bangles and clay seals carrying early inscriptions.
The reason any of this is visible rather than dispersed is the temple. The anthropology centre records that a former abbot, Phra Khru Athon Sangwonkit, began collecting beads from the mound in B.E. 2525 (1982), at a time when villagers avoided the place because picking up beads was held to bring misfortune — a belief that, whatever else it did, left the deposit comparatively undisturbed. His collection became a museum in the temple grounds, named after him, and later reorganised as the Khlong Thom Museum, formally opened in B.E. 2558 (2015). It is the museum, not the temple buildings, that is the reason to come, and the provincial office of the National Office of Buddhism records that it receives visitors daily and is used by school groups from across the country.
The Khlong Thom Museum in the temple grounds — the bead collection begun by the former abbot Phra Khru Athon Sangwonkit from B.E. 2525 (1982) and formally opened in its present form in B.E. 2558 (2015). The anthropology centre lists mosaic glass beads with human faces worked into them, agate, quartz and carnelian beads, gold beads, pottery, stone tools, bangles and clay seals carrying early inscriptions.
Khuan Luk Pat itself, the low mound behind the temple compound that gives the site its name. This is the deposit the Fine Arts Department excavated between 1 and 15 September B.E. 2523 (1980), recovering Indo-Pacific glass beads at two to two and a half metres depth.
The temple's own twentieth-century fabric — ordination hall, monastic quarters and the large cremation ground the provincial office records at 54 rai 2 ngan 13 square wa. It is a working village monastery and makes no claim to antiquity; the age at this site belongs to the ground.
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 | Museum: 08:30–16:30 daily, per the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre. No source read for this page states hours for the temple grounds themselves. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: 20 baht. Foreign visitors: 100 baht. |
| Dress | A working village monastery. Shoulders and knees covered on temple ground, shoes off in the ordination hall. The museum is a museum and is less formal, but it is inside the temple compound. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Moo 2, Khlong Thom Tai subdistrict, Khlong Thom district, on the main road south from Krabi town towards Trang. The museum is inside the temple compound. |
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.
Khuan Luk Pat is the mound behind Wat Khlong Thom whose name means bead hill. The Fine Arts Department excavated it between 1 and 15 September B.E. 2523 (1980) and recovered Indo-Pacific glass beads at two to two and a half metres depth. It identifies Khlong Thom as a place that manufactured and traded glass beads, on the Andaman coast, roughly two thousand to one thousand years ago.
The temple is a twentieth-century village foundation and does not claim otherwise. The Krabi provincial office of the National Office of Buddhism records the first monastic quarters on the site in B.E. 2451 (1908), a permanent resident community from B.E. 2498 (1955), and the grant of the ordination boundary on 10 July B.E. 2504 (1961). The antiquity at this site is in the ground behind the compound, not in the buildings.
Yes — the Khlong Thom Museum is inside the temple grounds. The Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre records it as open 08:30 to 16:30 daily, with admission of 20 baht for Thai adults and 100 baht for foreign adults, half those rates for children, and free entry for local residents, disabled visitors and children under six. Rates move; confirm before relying on them.
In part because local people avoided the mound. The anthropology centre records a belief that picking up the beads brought misfortune, which left the deposit comparatively undisturbed, and records that a former abbot, Phra Khru Athon Sangwonkit, began systematically collecting from the site in B.E. 2525 (1982). His collection is the basis of the museum that now stands in the temple grounds.
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 Krabi’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.