Nakhon Pathom

This Monday was a holiday commemorating the death of Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand’s previous king. Although I was still a bit tired from my trip to Chiang Rai, the sky was so blue that I could not help feeling drawn outside. At eight o’clock, I called a Grab cab and rode it all the way to the nearby town of Nakhon Pathom; I should point out there are trains from Bangkok to Nakhon Pathom, but I could not for the life of me figure out the schedule, which seemed to indicate that only one single train would leave that entire morning.

This Monday was a holiday commemorating the death of Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand’s previous king. Although I was still a bit tired from my trip to Chiang Rai, the sky was so blue that I could not help feeling drawn outside. At eight o’clock, I called a Grab cab and rode it all the way to the nearby town of Nakhon Pathom; I should point out there are trains from Bangkok to Nakhon Pathom, but I could not for the life of me figure out the schedule, which seemed to indicate that only one single train would leave that entire morning.

The main attraction of Nakhon Pathom is the 120-metre-tall Phra Pathom Chedi, said to be one of the biggest stupas in the world. According to some accounts, the holy site has a history that reaches all the way back to the fourth century BCE, when a Buddhist temple was erected in Nakhon Pathom. By the beginning of the second century BCE, a stupa had allegedly been built, but it was first mentioned by Buddhist texts from 675 CE. Phra Pathom was thus the principal stupa of Nakhon Pathom during its heyday as the largest settlement in the Dvaravati Kingdom, which existed from the sixth to the eleventh century.

After many years of neglect, the stupa was rediscovered in the nineteenth century by a certain monk named Mongkut, who would later go on to become King Rama IV. As king, Mongkut had the stupa rebuilt in the popular Sri Lankan style, which favoured long, simple, conical roofs over the roofs familiar from Ayutthaya: octagonal structures curving gently towards the top and filled with niches. Since the journey between Bangkok and Nakhon Pathom took a long time before the age of automobiles, a palace was built west of the stupa for royal visitors. Unfortunately, the palace complex is closed between nine in the morning and four in the afternoon, so I did not have a chance to visit it.

Following a clockwise walk around the stupa and a fruitless trip to the palace grounds, I called a Grab cab to the Phra Prathon Chedi, which lies about four kilometres east of its more famous counterpart. Unlike the Phra Pathom Chedi with its golden, bell-shaped base, Phra Prathon Chedi proudly exhibits its brick quadrilateral foundations dating all the way back to the fourth century. At the top of this base stands a prang which, as its white coating indicates, was added much later.  

My last stop was Wat Sam Phran, a temple about one third of the way between Nakhon Pathom and central Bangkok. A few years back, this temple captivated the internet with its unusual design: it consists of a pink seventeen-story tower enveloped in the coils of a giant dragon. While it stands in the middle of a very unremarkable urban landscape, the temple continues to draw a number of tourists, many of whom scale the seventeen floors to get a view of God knows what. I, for one, did not feel tempted in the slightest, judging that the best view was of the tower itself.

The Phra Pathom Chedi
Guardian statues in front of a rounded portal
Within the inner ring of the chedi
The chedi from closer-up
The arcades of Phra Pathom Chedi
Phra Pathom Chedi from below
The old bridge to the Sanam Chan Palace
Wat Phra Prathon
An old vessel at the temple
The chedi as seen from the courtyard
The chedi as seen from a corner
The tower of Wat Sam Phran
The golden Buddha of Wat Sam Phran
The tower from below

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