Wat Pa Pradu

What the official record says

Where Wat Pa Pradu 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.

What the record settles is the rebuilding, not the beginning. The earliest dated instrument in the file is the 1906 ordination-boundary grant, more than seventy years after the rebuilding the tradition describes and an unknown span after whatever stood here first.

The history of Wat Pa Pradu

Almost every reclining Buddha in Thailand lies on its right side. The posture is not decorative: it is the lion's repose, the position the Buddha is described as taking at his final passing, and sculptors do not vary it. The large reclining image at Wat Pa Pradu lies on its left. The Tourism Authority of Thailand, which measures it at 11.95 meters long and 3.60 meters high, calls it the strangest reclining Buddha in the country, and the Rayong Provincial Administrative Organization says the same in almost the same words. Nobody consulted here offers a documented explanation, which is the honest state of the question and also the reason people come.

The monastery's own history is better recorded than the image's. The Fine Arts Department register describes a site supposed to date from the Ayutthaya period that had fallen derelict, and tells the story that in B.E. 2372 a monk the villagers knew as Upatchaya Thian came over from Wat Noen looking for somewhere quiet to meditate and found ruins instead: a collapsed ordination hall, a Buddha in the Palelai posture, directional viharas and the large reclining figure. He raised the villagers and they rebuilt. The monastery took the name Wat Pa Lelai from the Palelai image that became its principal one. In B.E. 2449 a new ordination hall went up under Phra Khru Samut Samankhun and the ordination boundary was granted on 12 September of that year, 7 wa by 14 wa. Four years later the ecclesiastical head of the Chanthaburi circle pointed out that the name collided with the famous Wat Pa Lelai in Suphan Buri, and in B.E. 2470 it was changed to Wat Pa Pradu, after the stand of pradu trees on the ground. The provincial administrative organization notes that one of those trees is left, at the gate.

The reclining image did not always have a roof. The tourism authority records that it stood in the open and that the vihara now covering it was built in B.E. 2524 — which is to say the protective building is younger than most of the visitors reading this. The monastery's status is also recent on paper: resolution 184/2550 of the Sangha Supreme Council, appointing an abbot, names it as a royal monastery of the third class, ordinary type. The provincial administrative organization dates the elevation to B.E. 2523, and no gazette instrument for that date was found in this run, so the grade is carried here on the Council's authority and the year on the province's.

Its protection is weaker than Wat Lum's and the difference is worth stating precisely. Wat Pa Pradu was named in a list of ancient monuments published in the Royal Gazette in B.E. 2566, which the department codes separately from registration. The monument is protected, and no works may be done to it without the Director-General's written permission, but it has not been registered under section 7 and no land boundary has been drawn around it. Fourteen Rayong monuments carry one of those two statuses; four of them, this one included, have only the list.

What you actually see

The reclining Buddha, which the Tourism Authority of Thailand measures at 11.95 meters long and 3.60 meters high, lying on its left side rather than its right — the reversal is the single reason most visitors come, and it is visible at a glance.

The vihara built over that image in B.E. 2524 according to the tourism authority; before it was raised the figure lay in the open air.

The Palelai-posture Buddha, seated Western-style with the feet down, which the register names as the image found in the ruins and which gave the monastery its first name.

The surviving pradu tree at the entrance gate, the last of the stand the monastery was renamed after in B.E. 2470.

The ordination hall rebuilt under Phra Khru Samut Samankhun, whose boundary grant of 12 September B.E. 2449 is the earliest dated instrument in the monastery's file.

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.

• Why the reclining image lies on its left. Neither the tourism authority nor the provincial administrative organization offers a reason, and no departmental study of the image was found.
• When the image was made, and by whom. The register describes it as already ruined when the monastery was rebuilt and gives it no date at all.
• The instrument that raised the monastery to royal rank. The Sangha Supreme Council names the grade; the provincial administrative organization gives the year as B.E. 2523; no Royal Gazette entry for the elevation was located, in contrast to Wat Lum, whose entry the Council itself recites.
• The sect. No official source read in this run states whether the monastery is Maha Nikaya or Dhammayuttika.
• The admission arrangement, if any. The tourism authority publishes hours but no fee, and no official figure was found.

Wat Pa Pradu: 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.