Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen

What it is

Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen is a third-class royal monastery of the ordinary type standing on what is effectively a small square island in the canals west of the Chao Phraya, and it is the home temple of the Vijja Dhammakaya meditation tradition. The temple's own history gives its address as 300 Ratchamongkhon Prasat Road, Pak Khlong Phasi Charoen subdistrict, Phasi Charoen district, Bangkok, an area of about 20 rai 88 square wa, in the Mahanikaya order. It records the founding at about B.E. 2153, 1610, in the reign of King Songtham, the grant of consecrated ground at about B.E. 2158, 1615, and elevation to royal monastery at about B.E. 2199, 1656, under King Narai. What brings most visitors now is newer: a 69-metre Buddha image and an 80-metre stupa raised beside a monastery that is otherwise all Ayutthaya foundations and Pali school.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

What's inside

Three structures account for most of a visit to Wat Paknam. The Maharatchamongkhon stupa, begun in 2004 and completed in 2012 at a cost of 500 million baht, is a twelve-sided tower 80 metres high containing five floors, the uppermost of which holds an eight-metre glass stupa. Phra Buddha Dhammakaya Thepmongkhon, the seated bronze Buddha standing before it, is 69 metres tall and 40 metres wide; work began on 4 March 2017 and was completed in 2021, and Thai Wikipedia records it as the tallest Buddha image in Bangkok and the third tallest in Thailand. The ordination hall holds the principal image, Phra Buddha Maha Mongkhon, and the temple keeps the preserved bodies of Phra Mongkhon Thepmuni, Sot Chandasaro, and of the late abbot Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangkhalachan, Chuang Varapunyo. Older and quieter, the temple's own history names the Tripitaka hall and its busabok-form scripture cabinets as royal craftsmen's work from King Narai's reign, and says the ordination hall itself uses that period's building technique.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

How long to spend

Allow seventy-five minutes at Wat Paknam. The stupa alone takes a good half hour, because five floors are climbed and the top-floor glass chedi is the sort of room people sit down in rather than pass through. The great Buddha, approached from the canal side, takes another fifteen minutes to walk around and look up at. That leaves half an hour for the older core, the ordination hall, the Tripitaka hall and the preserved bodies of the two abbots, which is the part most first-time visitors skip and the part that explains why the temple existed for four centuries before the tall things arrived.

Checked 2026-08-25

Season and crowds

Go in the morning, and go on a weekday if there is a choice. Wat Paknam publishes no opening or closing time on its own site, so a visit should be planned inside ordinary daylight rather than around an evening figure taken from a listing. The stupa's top floor is a lit interior, so it reads much the same at any hour, but the 69-metre Buddha is an outdoor subject that the middle of the day flattens and the early morning models. The temple is also a working Pali school and meditation centre, and weekends and Buddhist holy days bring large numbers of Thai visitors to the same staircases.

Checked 2026-08-25

Tickets

No admission is recorded for Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen. The temple's own website publishes no ticket price, no opening time and no closing time anywhere: what was checked was the site's front page, its history page, its temple tour page and its contact page, none of which carries a visiting section. Because no operator value exists, none is printed here, and a figure found on a booking or review site should not be substituted for one. Donation boxes stand in the usual places and giving is at the visitor's discretion. Anyone needing certainty before a long trip across the city can ask the temple's public relations office, whose numbers the site does publish.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

Getting there

Wat Paknam stands at 300 Ratchamongkhon Prasat Road, Pak Khlong subdistrict, Phasi Charoen district, Bangkok 10160. Its position is worth understanding before setting out, because it explains the awkwardness of the approach: the temple's own history records that it sits on the Bangkok floodplain at the mouth of Khlong Dan where that canal branches from Khlong Bang Luang, also called Khlong Bangkok Yai, which was the old main course of the Chao Phraya before the shortcut in front of Wat Arun was cut and became the river. The temple is bounded on the north by Khlong Bang Luang, on the east by Khlong Dan, on the south by a public ditch dividing it from Wat Apson Sawan, and on the west by the Phasi Charoen floodgate channel. Water on four sides is why the road approach loops.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

What to watch out for

Wat Paknam is a place of study and practice before it is a sight, and the temple presents itself that way: its own tour page describes an atmosphere for meditation and rest of mind, and it maintains separate telephone lines for the public relations office on 0-2457-9042 and 0-2467-0811, for the vipassana hall known as the White Building on 0-2457-4001, and for the practitioners' office on 0-2457-9968. Buildings behind those last two numbers are for people who have come to practise, not to look. Because the temple publishes no closing time, do not arrive late in the afternoon assuming the stupa will still admit visitors. The stupa is five floors of stairs, which matters for anyone with limited mobility, and the top floor is a shrine room where people are sitting in meditation, so shoes, voices and camera noise all belong at the door. Dress with shoulders and knees covered.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

Photography

The two subjects at Wat Paknam demand opposite settings. Phra Buddha Dhammakaya Thepmongkhon, 69 metres of bronze, needs distance and low light: from across Khlong Bangkok Yai, or from a canal boat, the figure sits above the roofs of the neighbourhood and acquires the scale that a photograph taken at its feet destroys. The glass stupa on the top floor of the Maharatchamongkhon tower needs the opposite, a dark room lit artificially, a steady hand and a high sensitivity, since a flash flattens the glass and disturbs people meditating a few metres away. Between them, the older core photographs badly in the middle of the day and well in the first hour of light. No photography ban is published by the temple, which makes courtesy the governing rule rather than a sign.

Checked 2026-08-25

Where it is

• 30 min

  13 min walk · เขตธนบุรี

  Wat Ratchakhrue

  • High · Heritage site
  • Place of worship
• 30 min

  15 min walk · เขตธนบุรี

  Wat Chantharam Worawihan

  • High · Heritage site
  • Place of worship
• 30 min

  16 min walk · เขตภาษีเจริญ

  Wat Kamphaeng Bang Chak

  • High · Heritage site
  • Place of worship

External links

• View on Wikidata