Wat Khlong Thom Museum

This guide to the Wat Khlong Thom Museum in Krabi centers on a single bead behind glass, carved with Pallava script and over a thousand years old, one survivor of a burial mound that villagers and organized diggers quietly emptied for generations. You'll hear about the monk, Phra Khru Aphonsangworakit, who became abbot here around 1966 and began buying back what diggers had already dug up rather than let it vanish into private hands. The collection, later opened by Princess Sirindhorn in 1992, also traces Khlong Thom's past as a jungle shortcut for traders moving between India and China.