The Tuesday stupa of the Nakhon Phanom circuit, at Na Kae: a 24-metre stupa in the Phra That Phanom manner that is a 1940s casing built over an earlier one, beside a preaching hall the Fine Arts Department reads as Vietnamese-influenced masonry carrying arches learned from the French.
วัดธาตุศรีคุณ · Wat That Si Khun
| Official name | วัดธาตุศรีคุณ — Wat That Si Khun |
|---|---|
| Where | Na Kae, Na Kae, Nakhon Phanom |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; no gazette registration recorded The Fine Arts Department carries this temple in its national monument register with a written architectural description and GPS coordinates, and with no registration status, no gazette instrument and no monument land fixed. It is in the register without being a registered ancient monument, and it is not in either of the two departmental lists that named other Nakhon Phanom monuments in B.E. 2566 and B.E. 2569. The register also writes the temple's name two ways — วัดธาตุศรีคุณ in the record's name field, วัดพระธาตุศรีคูณ inside the description — and this page uses the register's own name field with the variant recorded as an alias. |
| Coordinates | 16.944643, 104.497116 Fine Arts Department register, monument 0003513 (GPS) |
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.
Note what the Authority's wording does and does not claim. It says the stupa was FOUND in B.E. 2340, not built then, and it says the restoration of the 1940s enclosed the earlier stupa rather than replacing it. So the thing a visitor sees is a mid-twentieth-century casing over something older that no source read in this run dates. The department, which would be the body to date it, has left the field empty.
Wat That Si Khun stands at Ban Na Kae Noi in Amphoe Na Kae, in the hills west of the Mekong plain, and the Tourism Authority describes it as the sacred site the people of Na Kae district are identified with. It is the Tuesday stop on the province's birthday circuit. Like almost everything else in this province it takes its form from Phra That Phanom, and like almost everything else in this province the interesting part is what the state record does and does not say.
What it does not say is when anything here was built. The Fine Arts Department's register entry for this monument has an empty history field. That is unusual — four of the six temples in this run have a written history from the department, one of them several hundred words long — and it is worth stating plainly rather than papering over with a date from somewhere else. The Tourism Authority gives two: the stupa was found in B.E. 2340, and it was substantially restored between B.E. 2486 and B.E. 2490 by casting a new structure over the original. Read carefully, neither of those is a founding date. The first is a discovery and the second is an enclosure.
So the stupa a visitor sees is a mid-twentieth-century building wrapped around an older one. It stands 24 metres high in total. Its upper part follows Phra That Phanom in shape and in ornament; the first and second tiers are square and carry stucco figures of devas and trees around the body; the summit is dressed with a gold chatra. Inside, the Tourism Authority records relics of Moggallana, Sariputta and Sangkajai brought from India.
The department's own attention is somewhere else entirely, and it is the reason this temple earns a page. Almost the whole of its register description is given over to the ho chaek — the preaching hall — which it treats as a specimen of a building type rather than as scenery. It describes a hall on a raised floor, open on every side except the wall behind the monks' seats, which runs to the ground and is pierced at intervals with arched ventilation openings; a tiered roof with a gap left between the gable and the eaves for air, which is the same idea applied above; two wooden stairways; square columns with lotus capitals carrying the gable and square columns without capitals carrying the eaves; a timber ceiling and floor.
Then it places the building historically. This is the later of the two traditional ho chaek types, it says: masonry columns and walls with a timber roof structure, a form that came in under the influence of Vietnamese craftsmen, whose semicircular arches over the door and window openings were themselves learned from the French. That is a short account of how a French colonial detail reached a village preaching hall in the Thai north-east by way of Vietnamese builders, and it is in the state's own register. The department names a comparable hall elsewhere in the province, at Wat Tha Phochai in Tambon Phra Song, and its sentence is cut off at that point by the thousand-character limit the service imposes on the field.
The stupa: 24 metres in total height, the upper part following Phra That Phanom in form and ornament, the first and second tiers square and carrying stucco devas and trees around the body, and a gold chatra at the summit. What stands is the casing built between B.E. 2486 and B.E. 2490 over the earlier stupa.
The ho chaek, the preaching hall, which is what the Fine Arts Department's register is really about: raised floor, open on all sides but the one behind the monks' seats, that wall carried to the ground and pierced with arched vents, a tiered roof with an air gap between gable and eaves, two wooden stairs, square columns with lotus capitals under the gable and without them under the eaves, timber ceiling and floor.
The semicircular arches over the hall's openings, which the department reads as a French detail transmitted through Vietnamese craftsmen — a piece of colonial building history sitting in a village temple.
What the stupa holds, per the Tourism Authority: relics of Moggallana, of Sariputta and of Sangkajai, brought from India.
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 | A working temple. Shoulders and knees covered; shoes off before entering the preaching hall and the ordination hall. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Ban Na Kae Noi, Tambon Na Kae, Amphoe Na Kae, in the west of the province. The Fine Arts Department's register gives coordinates in Amphoe Na Kae; the Tourism Authority's own directions place it seven kilometres from Amphoe That Phanom on Highway 212, which does not agree with them. Parking and toilets on site, per the Tourism Authority. |
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 state source dates it, and the body that would is silent. The Fine Arts Department's register entry for this monument has an empty history field, which is unusual — most entries in this province carry several hundred words. The Tourism Authority of Thailand gives two years and neither is a founding: it says the stupa was found in B.E. 2340, and that a major restoration between B.E. 2486 and B.E. 2490 cast a new structure over the original one. So what a visitor sees is a mid-twentieth-century casing around something older that nobody official has dated.
The ho chaek is the temple's preaching hall, and the Fine Arts Department's register devotes almost its whole description of this monument to it rather than to the stupa. It is a raised hall, open on every side but the wall behind the monks' seats, with arched ventilation openings, a tiered roof with an air gap between gable and eaves, two wooden stairs and square columns. The department reads it as the later of two traditional types — masonry columns and walls with a timber roof — built under Vietnamese influence, with the semicircular arches over its openings learned in turn from the French.
No. The Fine Arts Department carries it in the national monument register with a written architectural description and GPS coordinates, but with no registration status, no Royal Gazette instrument and no monument land fixed, and it is not named in either of the two departmental lists of Nakhon Phanom monuments published in B.E. 2566 and B.E. 2569. Being in the register is not the same as being registered under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments Act, and this guide keeps the two apart.
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 Nakhon Phanom’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.