Wat Chom Trai

What the official record says

Where Wat Chom Trai 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 two Fine Arts Department accounts give different years for the renaming: the register says B.E. 2485 and the department's Trang archives says B.E. 2484. A year apart, same department, and neither cites a document. The register's own B.E. 2393 founding date carries no attribution at all.

The history of Wat Chom Trai

Na Yong sits inland from Trang town on the Phatthalung road, under the hills, and this monastery is the oldest registered thing in the district. It was Wat Cho, or Wat Krajo in the longer form, from about B.E. 2393, and became Wat Chom Trai in the 1940s — the register says B.E. 2485 and the department's Trang archives says B.E. 2484, which is the kind of one-year difference that tells you neither of them is reading a document. The village beside it is still called Ban Krajo, which is usually how you tell which name came first.

The ordination hall is the registered monument and it is worth looking at closely. The structure below is reinforced concrete; everything above is timber, the whole upper work, under a roof in three diminishing tiers, with wooden posts inside the hall carrying it. That combination — a concrete shell with a wholly wooden roof structure — is a southern building answer to a wet climate and a shortage of skilled masons, and it is the reason the Fine Arts Department describes these halls as the work of local craftsmen rather than of a school. The register notes a ditch marking the monastery boundary against the villagers' land, sandy soil in the grounds and a fence all the way round.

Inside is the thing that makes the page: Phra Phuttha Chom Trai, made in B.E. 2488, which the Fine Arts Department records as the first Buddha image in Trang province to be made by casting it in metal. The register gives its dimensions in the old units — a lap three sok four niu wide and a height of four sok six niu, so roughly a meter and a half across the knees and a little under two and a half meters tall. A first of anything in a province is usually a claim somebody has made up, and this one is not: it is stated by the department in two separate publications and it is a claim about technique rather than about antiquity, which is the sort of thing a provincial record can actually know.

The hall was restored between July B.E. 2554 and January B.E. 2555 by the department's Phuket regional office under contract 6/2554, worth 3,864,000 baht. The scope reads like an honest list of what goes wrong with a timber roof in the south: strip and reset the roof, replace the covering, repair the ceiling, repair the floor inside, repair the ground outside. Landscape work levelled and sand-filled the court around the hall and laid reinforced concrete. The contract required a restoration report with at least eighty photographs, which is the sort of condition that produces a usable record ten years later, and which this guide would like to see more often.

What you actually see

The registered ordination hall: reinforced concrete below, the entire upper structure in timber, under a roof in three diminishing tiers, with wooden posts inside carrying the load.

Phra Phuttha Chom Trai, made in B.E. 2488, which the Fine Arts Department records as the first Buddha image cast in metal in Trang province, with a lap three sok four niu wide and a height of four sok six niu.

The boundary stones, repaired in the B.E. 2554 restoration.

The ditch that marks the monastery's boundary against the surrounding village land, recorded by the register, with sandy ground inside and a fence all round.

The monastery library, built in B.E. 2517, recorded by the register alongside the opening of Pali teaching here in B.E. 2510.

The court around the ordination hall, levelled, sand-filled and concreted as part of the B.E. 2554 landscape work.

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 moo the monastery is in. The gazette text says Moo 3; the boundary plan attached to the same gazette, the register and the department's Trang archives all say Moo 7.
• The year of the renaming, where the Fine Arts Department register says B.E. 2485 and the department's Trang archives says B.E. 2484.
• Who founded the monastery and on what evidence the B.E. 2393 date rests. No source names a founder or cites a document.
• What Krajo means. No state source explains the old name.
• The sect, recorded only in the National Office of Buddhism's temple register, which refused access.
• Visiting hours, which no official source publishes.

Wat Chom Trai: 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.