Wat Aranyawiwake

Wat Aranyawiwake is a Thai Forest Tradition monastery at Ban Pong, in Intakhin subdistrict, Mae Taeng district, Chiang Mai province.

Its history, as told in Ajahn Plien’s own account of his life, begins with Ajahn Mun. Villagers from Ban Pong invited him to stay, and after a few days in the cremation ground of a neighbouring village they found him a quiet, low hill. Ajahn Maha Bua’s biography of Ajahn Mun confirms that he spent a rains retreat at Ban Pong. He spent it with five disciples, among them Luang Pu Waen, and when he left to wander on towards Chiang Dao he named the place Samnak Aranyawiwek, Ban Pong, and asked the villagers to look after it. The account dates this to 1927 and counts Ajahn Mun as the first abbot. Forest monks kept coming to stay over the following decades, and Luang Pu Waen later spent eleven rains retreats here before moving to Wat Doi Mae Pang.

Ajahn Plien Paññapatipo arrived on 12 February 1966 and stayed as abbot until he died on 15 February 2018, according to Thai Wikipedia. English-language pages that call him the current abbot are out of date, and who leads the wat now has not been confirmed. Abhayagiri lists a book by him, Mindfulness of Death, and read from it in 2014.

No official website was found, and none of the sources describes a visitor or meditation programme. If you go, treat it as a working monastery: dress modestly, keep quiet, and ask the monks in person before assuming a stay is possible.