From a village cemetery to a monastery

The land Wat Nong Chaeng stands on was originally a pa cha, a burial ground on the edge of the village, and in the mid-1970s there was no temple close to Ban Nong Chaeng, the nearest being some four or five kilometres away. In 1973 a wandering meditation monk, Phra Kru Chanaphirat of the nearby temple, came on thudong practice and pitched his almsman's tent beside this clearing. When two local residents, Koey Ruangaram and Mak Suegsanga, learned a monk had settled nearby, they showed him the empty cemetery ground, and he chose it as the site for a small monastic outpost. With just two hundred baht to buy thatch grass, the pair cut bamboo and raised a simple shelter that doubled as a dining hall, and asked him to stay for good.↗

What began as a samnak song, a humble monastic residence, grew as the community rallied behind it. Donors and villagers went on to build a sermon hall, a prayer hall and a kitchen, and the compound's first ordination hall, the bot, followed. Because the original cemetery plot was too small to qualify for formal registration as a temple, a resident named Maethai Klongkaeo donated additional land, the area now used as the cremation ground. The temple was officially established on 19 November 1984, with its foundation-boundary stones consecrated the following year, and it received its royal wisungkhamsima boundary marker shortly after, completing its status as a full wat.↗

After Phra Kru Chanaphirat's passing in 2000, a younger monk of the community, Phra Somchai Kalavichayo, took over as acting abbot and was formally appointed abbot in 2004. Known today by his ecclesiastical title Phra Kru Upatham Wacharakon, he has overseen steady development of the temple and the local area ever since. The compound covers roughly nine rai of land and continues to be listed as a practice centre for meditation.↗↗