Thailand Travel: The Thai Dragon Temple of WEALTH!

Google Maps Location to Wat Kham Chanot Temple, Udon Thani: https://goo.gl/maps/FuGyGyzXfNVZcJGn6

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If you are traveling to Udon Thani, you have already proven you are not the typical Thailand traveler. Udon Thani is a large province, with the center less than an hour from Laos. My very first visit to Thailand was very near here, in Amphoe Phen. Each day I would ride the local hotel’s leopard pink scooter from my resort over 30 minutes to the city center to explore the city and make friends.

Now, almost 2 years after my first visit, I was excited to travel back to Udon Thani but this time with my wife Angun. Since we started our first and then second business, she has wanted to visit the Wat Kham Chanot Temple in order to say a prayer for our business and invite good spirits to help. She also promised me that it would be an opportunity to take some great photos and video.

We drove from our home in Khon Kaen to our hotel in the center of Udon Thani. We stayed in the Prajaktra Design Hotel and enjoyed the rooms which were large, new and for a reason we couldn’t explain, featured a sink in the middle of the room. Although we drove our truck, we find it easier to take a Grab taxi to make our way around Udon and to have a more relaxing time to get around. I would love to tell you we did some amazing food crawl, but we were recommended to visit a Vietnam restaurant that ended up being rather far away and looking a lot like an American grocery store. The food was good but it just wasn’t the interesting vlogging experience, but the next day’s temple trip would provide a much better one.

In the morning we drove the truck 80 kilometers or about an hour and twenty minutes to the Wat Kham Chanot temple. It’s hard to believe Udon Thani is so big, but it’s actually a really large province. When you start to get close to the temple, you will start to see vendors selling Thai dragons made of banana leaves. These range widely from very small ones at 100 baht ($3.22), impressive ones going for 300 baht ($9.67) or huge ones that go for several thousand baht. We purchased one for 300 baht which was very impressive and you can see Angun holding it in the video. The woman told us that if we make this Thai dragon as an offering and receive our success, lottery number or wish, that we should go back and purchase one of the very large ones and offer it in thanks.

This temple is believed to be the real life location of a Thai Nagga or Dragon. The belief around this creature is that it is extremely lucky which lead to the creation of this temple. People make the long trek from every city in Thailand, not just the Isaan region or locals in Udon Thani. In fact, people come from as far as Bangkok or even from Laos to visit this site. People come to make offerings of banana leaf Thai dragons and pray for success in their business, wanting their job to flow well or to peer into the roots of an ancient tree for lottery numbers.

I was the only noticeable foreigner there and my experience is that this is not a place commonly on the tourist track. That made me a bit sad because I think foreigners can be a bit too focused on the night life in Udon Thani and miss the more beautiful and pure parts of the province.

Please enjoy this video for more detail and look forward to more Udon Thani travel vlogs in the future as well as other major cities in Thailand.