Chedi Klang Nam

What the official record says

Where Chedi Klang Nam 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.

The ONEP record does not hold together on the reign. It gives the building year as B.E. 2416 and, in a later paragraph, places the work in the reign of Rama IV, who died in B.E. 2411. The year falls in the reign of Rama V and the page never reconciles the two statements.

The history of Chedi Klang Nam

Before the Sukhumvit road reached this coast, the only comfortable way into Rayong was up the river. A crew coming in from the gulf needed to know when they had arrived, and the answer was built for them: a bell-shaped masonry chedi about ten meters tall on a low island in the river mouth, visible over the mangrove from well out. The cultural-environment register kept by ONEP dates the work to B.E. 2416, under the governor Phraya Si Samut Phokchai Chitsongkhram, whose personal name was Ket Yomchinda, and says the idea was borrowed openly from Phra Samut Chedi at Samut Prakan, which told officials traveling up to the capital that Bangkok was close. The Fine Arts Department's own description agrees that the two chedis resemble each other.

Its purpose has outlived its usefulness. Nobody navigates to Rayong by chedi any more, but the thing became the emblem of the province, and the devotional life around it has grown rather than faded. On the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, at Loi Krathong, the chedi is wrapped in red cloth. The tourism authority lists the cloth-draping as a fixture of the provincial calendar, run alongside the long-boat racing on the river. The ONEP record describes the ceremony closely enough to contradict itself about it, giving the length of the cloth as six meters in one paragraph and five in another, with two people climbing to drape the upper bell either way. Fishermen quoted on the same page put the point more simply: when you see the finial, you are home.

The island around the chedi is what the registration actually protects. The announcement of B.E. 2544 draws 13 rai 69 square wa around it — a figure that can be read off the department's own scan of the gazette page and that matches the register to the square wa. The ONEP record, measuring something else, describes the island as about fifty-two rai in one place and about fifty in another. Rayong City Municipality built the concrete bridge that crosses to it and maintains the ground, and the walk out through mangrove is now most of the reason people make the trip.

One point of method is worth recording here, because it would be easy to get wrong. The chedi's registration and Wat Ban Khai's sit in the same part of the Royal Gazette, vol. 118, special part 124 ng of 17 December B.E. 2544, and they are not the same instrument. Page 4 carries an announcement covering Chonburi, Rayong, Chachoengsao and Nakhon Nayok. Page 6 carries a separate announcement covering Chonburi and Rayong, signed on a different day, and the chedi is item 2 of that one. The department's register cites only the volume, part and publication date for both, so anyone who cites the first page for the chedi is wrong by two pages and will not be told so.

What you actually see

The chedi itself: a bell-form masonry structure the Fine Arts Department measures at about ten meters, standing on a circumambulation terrace with two flights of steps and a low surrounding wall, its base built as a row of pointed arched recesses.

The terrace balustrade, faced with pierced green-glazed tiles — the single detail that most clearly dates the work to the late nineteenth century rather than to anything older.

The mangrove island it stands on and the concrete bridge Rayong City Municipality laid across to it, which is how the site is reached on foot.

The stands of pine planted around the chedi, which the ONEP record notes and which make the island a place townspeople use in the evening rather than only a monument.

In the twelfth lunar month, the red cloth draped around the upper bell at Loi Krathong, with long-boat racing on the river beside it.

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 reign. ONEP's record gives B.E. 2416 for the building and also places it in the reign of Rama IV, who died in B.E. 2411. The two cannot both be right and the record does not choose.
• The size of the island. ONEP gives about fifty-two rai in one paragraph and about fifty in another; the Fine Arts Department's registered monument area is 13 rai 69 square wa, which measures a different thing again.
• The length of the cloth used in the draping ceremony, which the same ONEP page gives as six meters and as five meters.
• The opening hours. No official source read in this run publishes any, and the site is open ground reached by a public bridge rather than a ticketed monument.
• Whether the chedi was ever attached to a monastery. The tourism authority's provincial page associates a chedi klang nam with Wat Samut Khongkharam, also called Wat Pak Nam, and the registration treats this one as a monument in its own right with no monastery named.

Chedi Klang Nam: 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 Rayong’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.