Southern · Thailand
Nakhon Si Thammarat · นครศรีธรรมราช
Khao Luang national park, Khanom pink-dolphin coast, shadow-puppet heritage.
- Region
- Southern
- Population
- 1,551,000
- Area
- 9,942 km²
- Stories filed
- 1
About Nakhon Si Thammarat
History
Nakhon Si Thammarat — \"glorious city of dharma\" — was the capital of the Tambralinga kingdom, a Malay-Buddhist state already trading with India and Sri Lanka when Angkor was at its height. Its great temple, Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan, is the spiritual capital of southern Thailand, its 77-metre Ceylonese-style chedi believed to enshrine a tooth relic of the Buddha brought from Sri Lanka in the third century. The province gave Thailand its shadow-puppet art (nang talung), the Manora dance drama, and a school of lacquerware and silverwork still practised in the old town.
Landscape & geography
The province straddles the peninsula's narrow waist, with a long Gulf coast on the east and the Nakhon Si Thammarat range rising to 1,835 metres at Khao Luang in the west. Banana, rubber, rambutan, and durian plantations dominate the coastal plain; the forested interior in Khao Luang National Park shelters rare plants including the giant Rafflesia kerrii parasite flower, visible when blooming from January to March. The southern coastal districts include the Bird Park and the shallow Don Hoi Lot estuary.
Why visit
Wat Phra Mahathat is a pilgrimage destination for Thais from across the country; its October–November Hae Pha Khuen That festival — when a cloth the length of the chedi's circumference is raised by thousands of worshippers — is one of the south's great communal ceremonies. Khao Luang's Krung Ching waterfall — a 40-metre cascade through old-growth forest — is one of Thailand's finest. The nang talung leather shadow-puppet workshops in the old town demonstrate a living craft; nielloware silverwork sold on Thalay Road is among the finest in the country.
Stories from Nakhon Si Thammarat
Articles, reviews, and itineraries tagged to this province.
