Wat Chama Thevi Temple

Address: Wat Chamadevi (Wat Chama Thevi), Lamphun, Thailand

Hours: Daily, dawn-dusk

Admission: Free (donations welcome)

• Visit early in the morning to see local devotional activity and to appreciate the temple's Lanna architecture before day-trippers from Chiang Mai arrive.
• Combine this stop with other Lamphun sites (Haripunchai and the old town) for a fuller historical context - Lamphun is a short drive from Chiang Mai and easy as a half-day trip.
• Look for finer wood-carving and stucco details that are often overlooked by visitors who focus only on the main chedi.

Also known as Wat Ku Kut, this temple was originally built by the Khmers around 755 AD, then renovated by the Mon during the Hariphunchai dynasty. The viharn is very new, but the temple’s fame rests on one small and one large chedi dating back to the Dvaravati era, between the 7th and 11th centuries; there are no comparable structures in the country.

Both chedis are made of laterite and feature standing Buddhas in niches that have understandably been ravaged by the ages. The taller, called the Suwan Chang Kot, is stepped and rectangular, while the smaller is an unusual octagonal shape. The ashes of Queen Chama Thevi, the Hariphunchai kingdom’s first ruler, are enshrined inside the taller chedi.

The name Ku Kut means “chedi without top”, a reference to the original crown of the stupa, which was made of gold but long ago disappeared.