Wat Khun Samut Jeen is located near Ban Sakhla (drive towards Chulachomklao Fort and turn right a few kilometers before the entrance to the fort), but can only be reached by boat. The area is very low-lying – probably under sea level – so the main activities are shrimp farming and fishing.
Along the road to Ban Sakhla, long-tail boats can be rented to bring you to your destination anywhere in the expansive network of canals.
After walking for about ten minutes, I reached the first house of Ban Khun Samut Jeen. There were some pictures and maps that indicated that over the last 20 years or so, the sea had encroached on the land by about one kilometer.
Walking down the track, I came to a bright red building housing a Chinese shrine. An elderly woman was trotting along and she said the shrine was called Noom Noi Loi Chai and it was worshipped by local fishermen. Apparently, this shrine had already been moved once due to land erosion.
I offered to carry her bag with groceries and walking further along the shrimp fields, we passed a number of wooden shacks until we reached the woman’s home. I was enjoying the cold water offered in return for my beast of burden services, when a neighbor came running. His old mother was under the weather and he was looking for herbal medicine to remedy her illness as the nearest medical clinic was many kilometers away.
Straight ahead was a concrete raised walkway with the temple in the distance surrounded by trees. As I arrived at the temple the first structures, I passed were the kutis, the accommodation for the five resident monks. These were built on stilts in order to stay above high tide. A bit further were the crematorium, the open sala, and the temple.
Evidence of the land erosion could be clearly seen by looking out into the Gulf of Thailand . A line of electricity pylons stood testament that there was once a thriving community under there waters.
However, the abbot was quite stoic about the fact that nature is likely to prevail over man and said that things are actually only bad during big storms, which inevitably will happen once every two or three years.
There is a public boat to Ban Khun Samut Jeen leaving the pier at the Paknam Market in Samut Prakarn’s Amphoe Muang every day at about 9.00 am. The boat returns to Paknam at 3 pm.