Wat Chai Mongkhon

Wat Chai Mongkhon sits on the Chao Phraya riverbank in Ang Thong town, and its real claim to fame isn’t ancient architecture — it’s a three-storey crematorium completed in 2017 with a working elevator and escalator connecting the floors. Local media covered it as a curiosity when it opened; Thai headlines joked it looked more like a department store than a place to say goodbye to the dead.

The temple itself dates to around 1857, late in King Rama IV’s reign, and received royal consecration in 1982. But almost nothing standing today is that old — the ordination hall was rebuilt in reinforced concrete in 1997, the mondop in 1994, the vihara in 2011, and the sermon hall in 2012. The abbot built the crematorium vertically because the temple had little spare land left after donating most of its grounds to a school; the 22-metre, 16-sided tower was the practical answer to a genuine space problem, not a design flourish. Two smokeless cremation furnaces occupy the second floor, a cold-storage room for bodies awaiting cremation sits on the third, and decorative stucco panels depicting Brahma and Ganesha were added specifically to soften the building’s appearance for the residential neighbourhood around it. When it’s not in use for a funeral, the ground floor doubles as a hall for the monks.

Watch out: This is a working crematorium, not a museum piece. If a cremation service is underway, keep your distance and stay quiet rather than treating the building as a photo stop.

Riverside, the temple grounds are modest rather than grand — a working neighbourhood wat rather than a tour-bus destination, which means it’s usually quiet outside of funeral days. It sits close enough to central Ang Thong to combine easily with the town’s other temples, including the province’s headline attraction, the 92-metre Buddha at Wat Muang, and the reclining Buddha at Wat Khun Inthapramun.

Insider Tip: Ang Thong gets a fraction of Ayutthaya’s crowds despite sitting just upriver — Wat Chai Mongkhon is a good example of the kind of low-key, genuinely local temple that rewards a short detour off the Ayutthaya trail.

Modest dress is expected, as at any active Thai temple, and there’s no fixed visit duration worth planning around — most people spend 15–20 minutes here before moving on to Ang Thong’s bigger draws.