Khao Pina and its caves

What the official record says

Where Khao Pina 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.

Two things do not reconcile. The register narrates a visit by King Prajadhipok on 10 February B.E. 2471, while the cypher he left is recorded by both the register and the SAC database as reading ปปร and ๑๐/๑๐/๗๑ — a date of 10 October, not 10 February. And the number of caves is given as six levels by the Fine Arts Department register and the SAC database, but as eight caves by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, which names a different set.

The history of Khao Pina

Khao Pina is one hill standing on its own out of the rice land at Na Wong, limestone, about a hundred meters high, with a tarred road running round the foot of it. The caves inside are stacked rather than spread, and the register sorts them into six levels reached by stairs that get steeper as you go up. At the bottom, below ground level, is Tham Nam, permanently flooded, with a watercourse running under the hill. At the top are a terrace of rock you can sit on and look out from, and a cliff face with a king's initials cut into it. Between those two things is about four thousand years.

The archaeology is at the bottom and in the side chambers. Tham Hoi Khong produced polished stone axes and tripod pots — หม้อสามขา, the three-legged vessel that marks the prehistoric coastal cultures of the Thai-Malay peninsula. A survey by the Phuket regional office in B.E. 2556 found a separate shelter and cave on the north side, locally called Tham Khi Wua, with earthenware sherds and stone tools in a chamber partly filled by roof collapse. The SAC database places the earliest occupation three to four thousand years ago, and then two much later phases, which is the normal shape for a limestone hill: people shelter in it, leave, and come back when it becomes a sacred place.

The second level holds Tham Ruesi, and its story is a small lesson in how caves get renamed. It was called the cave of bones, because that is what was in it — a great quantity of old human bone. In B.E. 2495 a monk, Phra Baidika Nimit Sumangkhalo, had the bones collected and cremated and a figure of a hermit set up at the mouth, and the hermit's name stuck. Above that, on the third level, is Tham Phra Banthom with a reclining Buddha built in a hard lime plaster, made when Khun Krai was abbot about a century ago by a craftsman named Nai Nui Suwannakhiri from Ban Khuan Khan in Mueang Trang. The fourth level holds five more images in the same material, of which the register says one is of unknown age and four are later. The fifth holds a chedi nobody can date, restored under Khun Krai, with his ashes walled into a lotus-shaped plinth by his descendants in B.E. 2466.

What put Khao Pina on the map was royalty. Prince Naris came on 31 May 1902. King Vajiravudh came twice, on 19 May B.E. 2452 and 30 June B.E. 2458 according to the register, with a further visit in B.E. 2453 in the SAC account of Tham Champa — three dates for two visits, which nobody has reconciled. King Prajadhipok came in B.E. 2471 and left his cypher, ป.ป.ร., cut into the topmost cliff. The register dates that visit to 10 February; the inscription itself carries ๑๐/๑๐/๗๑, which is October. One of the two is wrong and the page does not know which.

What you actually see

The six levels of the cave system as the Fine Arts Department register sets them out, from Tham Nam below ground level, permanently flooded with water running under the hill, to the open terraces at the top.

The royal cypher ป.ป.ร. cut into the uppermost cliff face, with the figures ๑๐/๑๐/๗๑ beside it.

Tham Phra Banthom on the third level, with a reclining Buddha built in hard lime plaster about a century ago by a craftsman from Ban Khuan Khan, made when Khun Krai was abbot.

Tham Phra Ong Klang on the fourth level, with five lime plaster images, one of which the register says cannot be dated and four of which are later work.

The chedi on the fifth level, of unrecorded date and badly decayed before Khun Krai restored it, with Khun Krai's ashes set into a lotus-shaped plinth by his descendants in B.E. 2466 and a modeled likeness of Khun Naiyanapaya, the headman who looked after the hill while the monastery stood empty, behind it.

The view terraces at Tham Champa and Tham Makham on the top level, with Buddha images set on the rock shelf that runs out from them.

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 date of King Prajadhipok's visit, where the register says 10 February B.E. 2471 and the cypher he left reads ๑๐/๑๐/๗๑.
• How many visits King Vajiravudh made and when. The register gives B.E. 2452 and B.E. 2458; the SAC database adds B.E. 2453 for the meal at Tham Champa.
• How many caves there are. The register and the SAC database describe six levels; the Tourism Authority of Thailand says eight caves and names a partly different set.
• Whether any of the plaster Buddha images can be dated. The register says of the five on the fourth level only that one is of unknown age.
• Whether there is an admission charge. The SAC database gives opening hours but states no fee, and no other official source gives one.
• Which monastery is which. The site is managed in part by วัดเขาปินะ, while the Ministry of Culture's cultural data center lists a วัดถ้ำเขาปินะ with an address in Khao Kop subdistrict rather than Na Wong. The two names are used loosely and no state source distinguishes them.

Khao Pina: 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 Trang’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.