4 min read · อ่าน 4 นาที
Ask Bangkok where its history lives and it points to Rattanakosin Island — the palaces, the river temples. But the southeast has its own memory, older than most people guess, and it is kept in quieter places: a temple named after fishing cats, a shrine to the country’s most famous ghost, and a canal that predates every road in the district. This is a short field guide to all of them.
Wat Krathum Suea Pla — the temple of the fishing cats
On the southern bank of Khlong Prawet Burirom, at Soi On Nut 67, stands a temple believed to date to 1772 — the very end of the Ayutthaya era, a full century before the canal in front of it was dug. Nobody knows who founded it. The name records what was here before us: krathum trees on the bank, and the fishing cats (suea pla) that hunted along the water. The temple was restored in 1924 by Khun Prawet Chanarak and his wife, and it rewards a slow visit: the principal Buddha image, Luang Pho Phet, is Sukhothai-style and famously adorned with Russian-cut diamonds; there is a wax museum of revered monks, a museum explaining eighty postures of the Buddha, and a centuries-old shrine to Chao Pho Suea, the tiger god. Its Dhamma school has been teaching novices since 1945.
Wat Mahabut — where Mae Nak waits
Every Thai knows the story. In the reign of King Rama IV, a young wife named Nak, living by Khlong Phra Khanong, died in childbirth while her husband Mak was away at war — and loved him too much to leave. The tale of her ghost, and of the monk who finally confined her spirit, has been filmed more than two dozen times since 1959. What fewer people know is that her shrine stands in our district, at Wat Mahabut off On Nut Soi 7: a low building under enormous old trees, its roof built around the trunks, where visitors bring fine dresses, toys for her child, lotus and incense. The historian Anek Nawikamul traced the legend to a woman named Amdaeng Nak whose story may have been embellished by her own son. Legend or history, the devotion is real — go respectfully, as you would to any place of grief that became a place of hope.
A district’s history is rarely in museums. Here it is a temple older than the canal, and a ghost story the whole country knows by heart.
The canal itself
The oldest ‘site’ of all is the water: Khlong Prawet Burirom, dug from 1878 to 1880 by royal order to link Bangkok to the Bang Pakong River. The full story deserves its own piece — I’ve written it here — but even a short walk along the banks near Wat Krathum Suea Pla shows you the original logic of the district: temple, water, community, in that order.
Worth the short ride: Hua Takhe
Just past our district line in Lat Krabang, the old wooden shophouses of Hua Takhe Market line the same canal. It is one of the last places where you can stand on a plank walkway and see what every canal community out here — including ours — once looked like. Pair it with the temple visit; the canal connects them, as it always did.
How to visit
Dress modestly at the temples — covered shoulders and knees. Weekday mornings are quietest. Both temples are working monasteries, not attractions: the wax monks and the diamonds draw visitors, but the merit-makers around you are the living tradition. And if you visit Mae Nak, mind the etiquette locals keep: make your request politely, and if she delivers, come back and keep your promise.
สรุปภาษาไทย
ประวัติศาสตร์ของย่านตะวันออกเฉียงใต้อยู่ในที่เงียบ ๆ: วัดกระทุ่มเสือปลา ริมคลองประเวศบุรีรมย์ (ซอยอ่อนนุช 67) สร้างราว พ.ศ. 2315 ปลายกรุงศรีอยุธยา — ชื่อวัดมาจากต้นกระทุ่มและเสือปลาที่เคยชุกชุม ภายในมีหลวงพ่อเพชรศิลปะสุโขทัยประดับเพชรรัสเซีย พิพิธภัณฑ์หุ่นขี้ผึ้งพระเกจิ และศาลเจ้าพ่อเสือเก่าแก่
ส่วนวัดมหาบุศย์ (ซอยอ่อนนุช 7) คือที่ตั้งศาลแม่นาคพระโขนง ตำนานรักสมัยรัชกาลที่ 4 ที่ถูกสร้างเป็นภาพยนตร์กว่า 20 ครั้ง ผู้ศรัทธานำชุดสวย ของเล่นเด็ก และดอกบัวมาถวาย — ไปเยือนอย่างสุภาพ แต่งกายมิดชิด และอย่าลืมว่าทั้งสองแห่งคือวัดที่มีชีวิต ไม่ใช่สถานที่ท่องเที่ยว ปิดท้ายด้วยตลาดหัวตะเข้ ลาดกระบัง ชุมชนไม้ริมคลองเดียวกันที่ยังคงภาพอดีตของย่านเราไว้ครบถ้วน
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