Wat Pa Salawan

Wat Pa Salawan is a forest monastery on the Ratchasima to Pak Thong Chai road in Nakhon Ratchasima city, the main city of the Korat plateau. It belongs to the Dhammayut order.

It was one of the first two forest monasteries in Korat, both set up in 1932. Ajahn Thate, who was there, writes in his autobiography that Ajahn Mun’s disciples had avoided the province until Phra Dhammapamok (later Somdet Maha Virawong) asked Ajahn Singh Khantayakamo and Ajahn Maha Pin to go there. A police officer, Luang Charn Nikom, gave land beside the railhead, and Ajahn Thate organised the monks in building the first shelters and meditation huts at Wat Pah Salawan. Ajahn Singh became its abbot, and TrueID Travel credits him as the founder. Somdet Maha Virawong (Uan Tisso) named it Salawan, from sāla, the sal or dipterocarp tree, and vana, forest, for the many dipterocarp trees on the grounds.

Ajahn Maha Bua’s biography of Ajahn Mun records that Ajahn Mun later stayed at Wat Pa Salawan when devotees invited him to Korat, and received many visitors there. Luang Por Phut Thaniyo, whom Access to Insight names as the student of Ajahn Sao who recorded his teaching, was abbot by 1970. TrueID says he stressed vipassanā practice on the four foundations of mindfulness, which drew practitioners from across Thailand. Devotees later built the Burapha Acharn Chedi to honour him and the earlier teachers; Thai Wikipedia says it enshrines relics of the Buddha and the ashes of those teachers and of Luang Por Phut.

For visitors, TrueID describes a working meditation centre with room for up to 200 overnight practitioners. They wear white or plain practice clothes, keep the eight precepts and register at the meditation building. Bring few valuables, because the monastery has no attendants to look after visitors’ belongings. Dates, rooms and any foreign-language support are not given in the sources, so ask the monastery.