Wat Phra Borommathat Nakhon Chum

The Nakhon Chum Inscription (No. 3) records that in 1357 — 23 June by one academic conversion — King Lithai of Sukhothai enshrined a great relic and planted a Sri Lankan bodhi tree at Nakhon Chum, promising merit to all who pay homage to them; this is the root of the Nop Phra rite. The chedi was first a Sukhothai lotus-bud form, later joined by two bell-shaped chedis on the same base.

Around 1584 the temple was abandoned to river erosion and war. Some 300 years later, in 1849, Somdet Phra Phutthachan (To) visited Kamphaeng Phet and read the inscription at Wat Sadet; the governor, Phraya Kamphaeng Phet (Noi), had the site searched and cleared, finding three ruined chedis with relics, and restored them.

In 1871 Sae Pho, a Karen teak merchant under British protection known as Phaya Taka — a Burmese honorific for a chedi-builder, not a name — asked to build a new chedi over the old one, but he died in 1875 and work stopped. His younger brother Pho Po, a Karen British subject married to a Thai woman, Thong Yoi, resumed in 1904–05 with about 15,500 baht, bought the hti finial in Yangon for 1,700 baht and raised it on 7 May 1906 with three days of celebration.

Nine relics found in the old central chedi, in a silver boat-shaped casket and a gold urn, were re-enshrined in the new chedi. This gilded Mon-Burmese zedi with its Burmese hti is often likened to the Shwedagon and is revered by Kamphaeng Phet's Karen. Behind it stands a bodhi tree said to descend from Lithai's.

About three months after the hti was raised, King Chulalongkorn came on 25 August 1906, visiting Pho Po's house, lunching on a sandbar in Khlong Suan Mak and photographing the newly finished chedi, and in 1906–07 Crown Prince Vajiravudh passed through on his Phra Ruang tour, identifying Nakhon Chum as Chakangrao, which scholars still debate. Local records say that on 28 November 1913 the Supreme Patriarch had a Buddha image placed in the empty ubosot, that the temple received its consecrated boundary on 2 September 1954 and that it became a third-class royal temple on 4 February 1966. Malai Chupinit, a Kamphaeng Phet native, also mentions Nakhon Chum in his novel Thung Maha Rat.

The grounds also have a great stone dhammachakra with 24 spokes and a pair of deer, ringed by 24 small dhammachakra pillars, a reclining-Buddha viharn, the ubosot, the Phaya Lithai plaza and monument, and the Nakhon Chum Cultural Centre, a teak hall of old manuscripts and antiques.

The Nop Phra–Len Phleng festival, revived by the province in 1983, is held around Makha Bucha with a replica procession of King Lithai and elephants to the relic, candle-lit circumambulation, folk-song contests, a procession across the Ping and a light show at the historical park. In 2026 it ran 27 February–8 March, opening on Makha Bucha, 3 March, with 18 elephants. The province's Loi Krathong is held at Sirichit Park across the river; in 2025 it was branded Saithara Nakhon Chakangrao, 1–5 November.

It is open for worship in daytime, about 08:00–17:00, about 2–3 km across the Ping bridge from town or a short samlor ride from the bus terminal. The open plaza is very hot at midday and the paving burns bare feet. Dress modestly and walk clockwise around the chedi; late-afternoon light on the gold is loveliest.