Wat Prayurawongsawat Worawihan

What it is

Wat Prayurawongsawat Worawihan is a Buddhist monastery on the Thonburi bank of the Chao Phraya whose claim on a visitor's attention is a restoration rather than a relic. UNESCO gave the temple an Award of Excellence in the 2013 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, and describes Wat Prayurawongsawat as internationally recognised for its contribution to the sustainable development of the Kadi Chin community that surrounds it. That is a rare citation for a Bangkok temple. Most of the city's famous monasteries are known for a single image or a single king; this one is known for how its principal stupa was taken apart, studied and put back, and for the fact that the riverside quarter around it — a mixed Portuguese-descended, Chinese and Thai neighbourhood of narrow lanes — was treated as part of the monument rather than as its backdrop.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

What's inside

The dominant structure at Wat Prayurawongsawat is the Phra Borommathat Maha Chedi, a white bell-shaped stupa 60.525 metres tall on a base 50 metres across, ringed by 54 niches on its lower level and by 18 smaller stupas. Lightning struck it in 1871 and the major restoration that followed was completed in 2006; objects recovered from inside during that work are displayed in the Prayoon Phanthakhan museum, opened in 2008 in the chedi's base. In front of the temple stands the Khao Mo, an artificial rock mountain in a pond, its form said to derive from years of accumulated candle-wax drippings; a reclining Buddha sits in a grotto at its foot and small chedis crown the top. The ordination hall holds a Buddha cast in 1828, and a separate Sukhothai-period image, Luang Pho Phra Buddha Nak, measures 4.25 by 5.70 metres. The temple's other nickname, Wat Rua Lek — the iron-fence temple — comes from the English-made railing that serves as its wall.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

How long to spend

Allow an hour at Wat Prayurawongsawat. Roughly twenty minutes of that goes on the museum in the chedi base, which is small but dense and rewards reading the labels rather than walking past them; another twenty on the circuit of the stupa and the ordination hall; and the balance on the Khao Mo pond, which most people underestimate because it looks like a garden feature and turns out to be the part they linger at. Visitors combining the temple with a walk through the surrounding Kadi Chin lanes should budget two to three hours for the whole outing. Anyone arriving purely to see the white stupa from the outside can be finished in twenty minutes.

Checked 2026-08-25

Season and crowds

Early morning is the best time at Wat Prayurawongsawat. The stupa is white and unshaded, and between roughly eleven and three the glare off it is punishing in a way that a gilded or dark-tiled temple is not; the same wall that looks flat and blinding at noon shows its mouldings at eight in the morning. The Khao Mo pond faces the temple's front, so it takes low light from one side early and from the other late. Bangkok's wet season, broadly May to October, brings afternoon downpours that turn the pond terrace slick, which is an argument for the morning as well. ssmtour holds no operator-published opening hours for this temple, so treat any time of day as unconfirmed and prefer daylight.

Checked 2026-08-25

Tickets

ssmtour records no admission for Wat Prayurawongsawat, because no operator-published figure could be read. The temple's own website at watprayoon.com was requested repeatedly on 25 August 2026 and returned HTTP 403 Forbidden to every attempt, including through the Internet Archive snapshot, which resolves to an empty page shell carrying only the temple's name and address. No fee is therefore listed here, and no fee should be inferred from that silence in either direction — the admission rate is not published on this page. Visitors who want a figure before travelling should ask at the gate or telephone the monastery. Any price quoted by a booking site or a travel blog for this temple is an aggregator's number and is not recorded here.

Checked 2026-08-25

Getting there

The nearest rapid-transit station to Wat Prayurawongsawat is Itsaraphap on the MRT Blue Line, which opened on 29 July 2019 and serves the Kudi Chin community — the riverside quarter in which the temple stands. From the station the walk runs through residential Thonburi lanes rather than along the river, so a map is worth having open. The temple's own address is on Prachathipok Road in the Wat Kanlaya sub-district of Thonburi district, which puts it on the far side of the river from the old royal city and within walking distance of the Thonburi-side foot of the Memorial Bridge. Cross-river ferries from the Rattanakosin bank drop passengers close enough to walk in ten to fifteen minutes.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

What to watch out for

Wat Prayurawongsawat is an active monastery: shoulders and knees covered, shoes off inside the halls, and no walking in front of someone who is prostrating. The Khao Mo pond is the specific trap here. Vendors sell food for the turtles that devotees release into it, the stone edge is permanently wet, and the steps up the artificial mountain are narrow, uneven and without a handrail in places — this is not a climb to attempt in flip-flops or with a small child on one arm. Inside the museum in the chedi base, spaces are tight and low; tall visitors should watch their heads on the doorways. Because ssmtour holds no confirmed hours for the temple or for the museum, allow for the possibility that the museum is shut when the temple grounds are open, and do not plan the day around it.

Checked 2026-08-25

Photography

The photograph at Wat Prayurawongsawat that is not available anywhere else in Bangkok is the white stupa reflected in the Khao Mo pond with the artificial mountain in the foreground — three different registers of built landscape in one frame. Shoot it early, from the pond's far side, with the sun behind you. A 50-metre base means the stupa will not fit in a normal lens from close range; back off to the perimeter wall or accept a detail of the niche band instead. The iron railing that gives the temple its Wat Rua Lek nickname photographs well as a foreground element against the white mass behind it. Inside the halls and inside the museum, assume that flash is unwelcome and that a monk or a worshipper in the frame needs permission first.

Checked 2026-08-25

Where it is

• 30 min

  4 min walk · เขตธนบุรี

  Santa Cruz Church

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

  5 min walk · เขตธนบุรี

  Baan Kudichin Museum

  • High
  • Museum
• 1 hour

  6 min walk · เขตคลองสาน

  Chao Phraya Sky Park

  • High
  • Nature site

External links

• View on Wikidata