A limestone hill standing alone above the Khiri Rat Nikhom plain, registered in its entirety as an ancient monument. Its mouth chambers hold painted and stucco scenes of the Buddha's life, a procession of nine half-emerged elephants, hell scenes with an old Thai caption still legible, and a floor that was lived on in the Neolithic.
วัดถ้ำสิงขร · Wat Tham Singkhon
| Official name | วัดถ้ำสิงขร — Wat Tham Singkhon |
|---|---|
| Where | Tham Singkhon, Khiri Rat Nikhom, Surat Thani |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 54, p. 2287, 3 January B.E. 2480; and vol. 102, part 128, 17 September B.E. 2528 Two instruments forty-eight years apart, and they register two different things. Both were downloaded from the department's mirror and read in this run. The first is the ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง กำหนดจำนวนโบราณสถานสำหรับชาติ of ๓ มกราคม ๒๔๘๐, the second national list under the Act B.E. 2477, whose Surat Thani block opens with วัดถ้ำสิงขรณ์ อำเภอท่าขนอน ตำบลถ้ำสิงขรณ์ and continues with วัดเขาพระนิ่ม, วัดเขาถ้ำ and two others in อำเภอกาญจนดิษฐ์. It registers the WAT. The second is the ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง ขึ้นทะเบียนโบราณสถาน of ๑๗ กันยายน ๒๕๒๘, which registers ภูเขาถ้ำสิงขร (ทั้งลูก) มีปริมณฑลโดยรอบ ๒๐ เมตร in ตำบลถ้ำสิงขร อำเภอคีรีรัฐนิคม — the whole mountain, with a twenty-metre perimeter around it. It was signed on ๒๓ สิงหาคม ๒๕๒๘ by ทวีศักดิ์ เสนาณรงค์, Director-General. Two administrative changes sit between the documents: อำเภอท่าขนอน is now อำเภอคีรีรัฐนิคม, and the 1937 spelling ถ้ำสิงขรณ์ is written ถ้ำสิงขร in 1985. The section number of the Act printed in the 1985 order was not legible in optical reading and is deliberately not given here. |
| Coordinates | 9.041341, 99.039836 Fine Arts Department register, monument 0005148 (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.
The registered monument and the temple are not the same object and the page should not blur them. What the 1985 order protects is the mountain in its entirety plus a twenty-metre collar around it; the 1937 list registered the wat.
Wat Tham Singkhon is about seventy kilometres north-west of Surat Thani town in Amphoe Khiri Rat Nikhom, which was called Tha Khanon when the temple was first registered. The Fine Arts Department's register describes the setting exactly: a cave in an isolated limestone hill, an old chedi standing at the cave mouth, and on the southern side a water cave with a stream running through the hill and out into Khlong Bang Narai, with fine stalactites and stalagmites throughout.
The decorated part is the mouth cavern, twenty metres wide and sixteen deep at its deepest, with 5.6 metres from floor to ceiling, divided into three chambers. The first is the largest at about seven by sixteen metres and holds the principal image at its centre: a stucco Buddha in the Parileyyaka attitude, with an elephant and a monkey crouched in front of it — the forest retreat where, in the tradition, an elephant brought the Buddha water and a monkey brought him honey. Two chedis stand in front of it, and eight seated Buddhas are ranged along the wall behind and to its left.
Then the detail that makes this cave worth the drive. Along the north wall, between the first and second chambers, the masons built a low brick crest wall pierced with niches for images or lamps, and below it they modelled nine elephants emerging half out of the wall in a row, all facing the principal image — a procession of elephants around the wall, answering the elephant offering honey at the Buddha's feet. It is a single idea carried through a whole room, and it is not the sort of thing a caption can convey.
The ceiling of the first chamber is worked as carefully. A low overhanging shelf 2.9 metres above the floor carries stucco scrolling foliage and Thai kanok, with celestial figures with hands joined at the ends of the stems, four-footed creatures, and — set into the centres of the flower rosettes — blue-and-white porcelain bowls. Further in, the ceiling carries painted monks, deities and yaksha with hands joined in homage before a stupa, which the department reads as possibly the Chulamani chedi in the Tavatimsa heaven where Indra enshrined the Buddha's cut hair. That reading is supported by what is painted next to it: the Great Departure, with a deity carrying the severed topknot up to heaven, painted on a stalactite shelf.
On the wall by the left-hand approach, to the right of the principal image, is a painted narrative about hungry ghosts with twelve lines of old Thai script still readable beside it. Above it a figure climbs the thorny silk-cotton tree of the hells with a deity prodding him from below, and there are further hell scenes: a skeleton with นรก - เปรต written beside it in black, another figure climbing the thorn tree with a crow pecking at him from above, and above that a palace-form building that must stand for heaven. At the cave mouth the ceiling carries flying deities in red, and this stretch is set with more porcelain than anywhere else, so that the bowls read as stars.
The second chamber, about 7.3 by 10 metres, has a masonry platform against the wall carrying a black-lacquered Buddha in the earth-touching attitude on a four-tiered base. The base itself is stucco relief: the assault of Mara with the earth goddess wringing her hair, and Rahula asking his father for his inheritance. Above and beside the image is an assembly of deities including Brahma, gandharvas, Vessuvan the yaksha king and Virupaksa the naga king, with mythical creatures such as makara among them.
The third chamber is a narrow recess at the far edge, and it is where the two oldest things were found: the four-armed Vishnu, broken at the head and arms, which the department dates to about the thirteenth Buddhist century and which is now at the Nakhon Si Thammarat National Museum, and — in the inner recess — the Neolithic material. The department adds a caution about that last point which this page repeats, because it is the kind of caution that usually gets dropped: the prehistoric objects may have been gathered up from across the cave floor, including from near the mouth, and stacked in the innermost recess by later people. Where they were found is not necessarily where they were used.
The chedi at the cave mouth is masonry, decorated all over with inset porcelain, and the department reads it as an imitation of the Phra Borommathat Chaiya, probably of the late Ayutthaya period. Its cella has directional niches holding standing Buddhas in the attitude of dispelling fear, and inside it is a replica Buddha footprint. It is one of a group of chedis in this province the department names as taking their form from the Borommathat — with those at Wat Khao Phra Anon in Phunphin, on Khao Sai Samo, and at Wat Khao Lak in Thung Yai in Nakhon Si Thammarat.
It is a working temple as well as a monument, and it is a cave: footing is uneven and wet in places. BAANLYY does not represent the temple and nothing here is religious or legal advice.
The mouth cavern, 20 metres wide and up to 16 deep with 5.6 metres of headroom, in three chambers.
In the first chamber: the stucco principal image in the Parileyyaka attitude with an elephant and a monkey crouched before it, two chedis in front, and eight seated Buddhas along the wall.
The nine elephants modelled half out of the low brick crest wall on the north side, all facing the principal image, with niches above them for images or lamps.
The ceiling of the first chamber: stucco scrolling foliage and kanok with celestial figures at the stem ends, four-footed creatures, and blue-and-white porcelain bowls set into the flower centres.
The painted hell scenes on the left-hand wall, with twelve lines of old Thai script still legible beside the hungry-ghost narrative and the caption นรก - เปรต written in black beside a skeleton.
The Great Departure painted on a stalactite shelf between the first and second chambers, with the Bodhisatta on the horse Kanthaka, deities bearing up its hooves, and a deity carrying the severed topknot to the Chulamani chedi.
In the second chamber: a black-lacquered earth-touching Buddha on a four-tiered base worked in stucco relief with the assault of Mara and the earth goddess, and an assembly of deities above and beside it including Brahma, Vessuvan and Virupaksa.
The chedi at the cave mouth — masonry, set all over with porcelain, read by the Fine Arts Department as an imitation of the Phra Borommathat Chaiya of the late Ayutthaya period, with standing Buddhas in the directional niches and a replica Buddha footprint inside.
The water cave on the southern side, with a stream running through the hill out into Khlong Bang Narai, and stalactite and stalagmite formations throughout.
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 inside a cave shrine. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off where the floor is laid for it. Footing inside is uneven and wet in places, and the water cave on the south side is a live stream. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Moo 3, Tambon Tham Singkhon, Amphoe Khiri Rat Nikhom — about seventy kilometres north-west of Surat Thani town and well inland of Chaiya. The registered monument is the whole limestone hill plus a twenty-metre perimeter around it, not only the cave. |
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 whole mountain. The temple was first registered as วัดถ้ำสิงขรณ์ in the national ancient-monuments list of 3 January B.E. 2480, when the district was still called Tha Khanon. Forty-eight years later, by an order published on 17 September B.E. 2528, the Fine Arts Department registered ภูเขาถ้ำสิงขร (ทั้งลูก) — the Tham Singkhon hill in its entirety — together with a twenty-metre perimeter around it. The two instruments register different objects and both are still on the record.
The Fine Arts Department does not date them, and this page does not either. What the department does date in this cave is other things: the four-armed Vishnu found in the innermost recess, at about the thirteenth Buddhist century; the chedi at the cave mouth, which it reads as a late-Ayutthaya imitation of the Phra Borommathat Chaiya; and the Neolithic occupation of the cave floor, roughly four thousand to two thousand years ago, on the authority of Amara Srisuchat.
It is a legend and the Fine Arts Department presents it as one, opening its own account with มีตำนานเล่าสืบต่อกันมาว่า — there is a legend handed down. It holds that an Ayutthaya-period king took a local woman as a consort, that her brother, a monk, was recognised by her when he preached at the palace, and that the king then had Wat Tham Singkhon, Wat Tham Rop and Wat Khao Anon built. No record read for this page supports any part of it, and no date for the temple is taken from it.
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 Surat Thani’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.