Wat Chaiwatthanaram, Ayutthaya

The one that looks like Angkor, on the wrong side of the river, facing west into the last hour of the light. It is the reason an Ayutthaya sunset tour exists as a category at all, and the reason some day trips from Bangkok never reach it.

Why Prasat Thong built it, in 1630

King Prasat Thong raised this temple in 1630, the first of his reign, on ground where his mother had lived. He built it in Khmer style, which is what gives it the corn-cob prangs you see nowhere else in the city on this scale. Its name signifies a long reign and a glorious age; some scholars read it as a monument to Ayutthaya's victory over Longvek as well as an act of merit for his mother.

It stands on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River, outside the island. That single geographical fact is why it is treated as an excursion rather than a stop.

Khmer, not Thai: why it looks like Angkor

Every other headline monument on the island is a chedi — the bell shape with a tapering spire. This one is built around prangs, the corn-cob towers borrowed from Khmer architecture, and that is a deliberate choice rather than an accident of date. Prasat Thong reached for the older imperial vocabulary of Angkor, and some scholars read the temple as a monument to Ayutthaya's victory over Longvek as much as an act of merit for his mother.

If you have already walked Wat Phra Si Sanphet, you will feel the difference before you can name it. Same city, same century or thereabouts, an entirely different idea of what a temple should look like.

What the name means

The name signifies a long reign and a glorious age — a statement about the king who built it rather than about the Buddha it honours. Prasat Thong had come to the throne by a route that needed legitimising, and a temple in the imperial style of the region's greatest empire is not a modest gesture.

Reading the plan: one prang, four, and eight chapels

The layout is symmetrical and easy to read once somebody points it out, so here it is in order:

1. A central prang, 35 metres high, on a raised platform.
2. Four smaller prangs at the corners around it.
3. Eight chedi-shaped chapels arranged around the platform's edge.
4. A rectangular cross-shaped passage joining the chapels into one circuit.

Walk the passage rather than cutting across the middle. It is the route the plan was drawn for, and it is where the temple stops being a photograph and starts being a building.

The 120 Buddhas of the cross-shaped passage

That passage originally held 120 seated Buddha images. What survives is fragmentary: bases, laps, the occasional torso, in a long line down both sides. It is the part of the site that most clearly shows what happened here, and it is quieter than the prang because most visitors photograph the towers and leave.

After 1767

The temple was not spared when the capital fell, and it was then deserted. Nothing was done with it for more than two centuries. The Fine Arts Department began restoring the site only in 1987 and opened it to the public in 1992, which makes it a much newer visitor attraction than its brick suggests.

Under two metres of water: 2011 and the repair

Standing on the riverbank it is easy to see how it happened, and worth knowing before you choose a month. The rain figures are on the weather page.

Seeing it at the end of the day

Because it faces the water on a west bank, the last hour before the light goes is when this temple is at its best, and the prangs turn the colour of the brick they are built from. Several of the temples here are floodlit after dark as well, which is a different photograph again — the schedule moves with the season and with festival programming, so ask locally rather than planning around a printed time.

The one private day built around this is the sunset-and-boat itinerary, which reaches the temple late and then puts you on the river as the light drops. It starts at From $190.

Getting to the west bank

By car it is a few minutes from the island and any private day handles it without comment. Independently it means crossing the river, which is easy enough by bicycle or tuk-tuk but is one more arrangement at the end of a long afternoon. The options are set out on how to get there, and where everything sits is on the map and layout page.