Wat Khoi Fish Park

Roughly 50,000 fish crowd the water at Wat Khoi Fish Park, a protected pool on the Noi River at a working Ang Thong temple in Pho Thong district. The species list reads like a who’s-who of Thailand’s river fish: striped catfish, silver barb, Pangasius catfish, giant gourami, and — the headline draw — Mekong giant catfish, among the largest freshwater fish on earth. Stalls by the water sell fish food, and the surface boils the moment it hits the water; that, more than any ruin or relic, is why people make the trip out here.

The sanctuary’s origin is more folk custom than official conservation project. Fish are said to have started gathering here during the tenure of a former abbot, Luang Pho Khem, more than 50 years ago — the kind of informal no-fishing zone that forms around Buddhist temples across Thailand when merit-making and superstition keep nets away from a stretch of river. In 1985, then-abbot Phra Khru Sorakitchathon worked with the district fisheries office to make the protection formal, declaring it an aquatic sanctuary. A Fine Arts Department survey has separately suggested the temple itself dates from around the same era as nearby Wat Khun Inthapramun, a Sukhothai-period foundation — interesting context, though there’s no excavated ruins complex to walk through here, just the working temple and its fish.

Away from the water, the grounds hold a teak sermon hall raised on octagonal wooden columns and a small folk museum: old Chinese-style boats, farming tools, antique lamps and clocks, and Buddhist manuscripts collected over the temple’s history. A community rice-cracker cooperative operates nearby, giving the visit a working-village feel rather than a purely touristic one.

Insider Tip: Buy fish food from the stalls near the entrance rather than expecting to find it deeper into the grounds — it sells out on busy weekends.

Bring a hat and water — most of the riverside area is exposed to direct sun. The temple is reachable by tuk-tuk, bicycle, or car from central Ang Thong; there’s no rail or express-boat link, so budget for a short taxi ride if you’re not driving.

Wat Khun Inthapramun, the Sukhothai-era temple the Fine Arts Department links Wat Khoi to, and Wat Pho Thong, also in the same district, both make sensible next stops if you’re touring Ang Thong’s temple trail.