Wat Lum Mahachai Chumphon

What the official record says

Where Wat Lum Mahachai Chumphon 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.

Neither half rests on a document this run was able to open. The merger account and the Ayutthaya date both reach the register through a provincial cultural office rather than through an instrument, and no inscription, gazette entry or excavation fixes either one.

The history of Wat Lum Mahachai Chumphon

Rayong town grew along one bank of a short river, and Wat Lum sits in the oldest part of it, on Taksin Maharat Road, a few hundred meters off the Sukhumvit highway. For most of its life it was two monasteries rather than one. The Fine Arts Department register, drawing on the Rayong office of the Department of Cultural Promotion, records that Wat Lum and Wat Noen stood close together until around B.E. 2463, when the ecclesiastical head of the Chanthaburi circle came through on an inspection and had them merged. The combined monastery kept the name Wat Lum on paper, and people went on calling it Wat Mahachai Chumphon in speech. Both names are still in use, which is why its records are filed under three different spellings.

What brings people here is not the merger. It is the shrine at the front of the compound, and the tree in front of that. Rayong occupies a particular place in the story of the man who became King Taksin: in B.E. 2310, after fighting his way out of the encirclement at Ayutthaya, he brought his men east and held the town before moving on to Chanthaburi. The register says in plain words that this monastery was where he stayed, and that this was the first place he was addressed by the name he is remembered under. That is tradition carried in a state file, not a dated record, and it is told here as tradition. The satue tree outside the shrine is the physical anchor of it: the provincial administrative organization puts its age at more than three hundred years and repeats the story that the king tied his war elephant to it and held council in its shade.

The shrine itself is modern and its own history is documented much better than the events it commemorates. The Rayong Provincial Administrative Organization records that it was first put up in B.E. 2477 by Nang Thongpan Phusuwan, wife of the head of the local post and telegraph office, after she dreamed that the king came to her and said he had nowhere to stay; she took the dream to the abbot and he told her to build. The first shrine was a small single-story wooden house holding a standing image. In B.E. 2503 the abbot of the day had a seated image cast at life size, and in B.E. 2507 the present building went up — reinforced concrete in Thai four-porched form, open on three sides, with a red ceiling picked out in gilded kanok. People still leave hats and swords there when a vow has been answered.

The monastery around the shrine was raised in rank within living memory. Resolution 185/2550 of the Sangha Supreme Council, appointing a new abbot, recites that royal permission had raised Wat Lum to the rank of royal monastery, third class, ordinary type, and gives the Royal Gazette entry of 19 September B.E. 2549 for it. That makes Wat Lum one of only two royal monasteries this guide has so far confirmed in Rayong, and the only one of the two whose elevation comes with a gazette citation attached.

What you actually see

The satue tree in front of the shrine, which the provincial administrative organization puts at over three hundred years old and which the tradition names as the tree the king's elephant was tied to; a pair of elephant figures stands at the shrine entrance.

The shrine of King Taksin, the 1964 building: reinforced concrete in four-porched Thai form, open on three sides, the ceiling red with gilded kanok, holding the life-size seated image cast in B.E. 2503 along with the votive hats and swords left by people whose vows were answered.

The present ordination hall, whose foundation stone the register dates to 11 May B.E. 2513: nearly 21 meters long and 17 meters wide, four-porched, roofed in dark brown corrugated tile with sixteen chofa and seventy-eight bai raka and hang hong finials in naga form set with gold-yellow glass.

Inside that hall, a floor of Saraburi marble and a principal image copied from Phra Buddha Chinnarat of Phitsanulok, cast in brass and gilded over lacquer, with a lap width the register gives as 4 sok 9 nio, flanked by the two chief disciples.

The old ordination hall, a small masonry building of the plain hall form, which is what the registered area of 2 rai 1 ngan 73 square wa is drawn around.

A figure of Guanyin beside the bell tower, which the provincial record notes and which is a reminder of how mixed the devotional life of an eastern seaboard town has always been.

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.

• Which sect the monastery belongs to. The Sangha Supreme Council resolution routes it through the central region and Region 13 but does not state Maha Nikaya or Dhammayuttika, and no page of the National Office of Buddhism's own temple register could be made to answer for it in this run.
• The page of the 2541 instrument on which Wat Lum's own entry sits, and the land description on it. The department's attached scan is the wrong page and stops one item short.
• Whether anything beyond the register's own retelling supports the B.E. 2234 date or the merger year of B.E. 2463. Both reach the file through a provincial cultural office with no instrument named.
• The opening hours. The Rayong Provincial Administrative Organization prints 06.00 to 18.00 daily for the shrine, but names a commercial travel site as its source on the same page, so it is not treated here as an official figure.

Wat Lum Mahachai Chumphon: 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.