Wat Tham Krabok (วัดถ้ำกระบอก,literally Temple of the Bamboo Cave) is a Buddhist temple (wat) in Thailand, located in the Phra Bhudhabart district of the Saraburi province. Since the 1970s, the temple has hosted Hmong refugees in a camp on its grounds, mostly consisting of people who fled Laos following the end of the Vietnam War. The Hmong were among the pro-American fighters in the Secret War against the Pathet Lao.

The temple was established in 1958 by the Buddhist nun Mae Chee Boonruen as a monk center (Samnak Song). In 1975 former Special Branch Division police sergeant Phra Chamroon joined the monastery and helped to upgrade it to temple (war) status. When the Hmong refugee camp Ban Vinai had to close due to lack of financial support in the early 1990s, the refugees fled to the temple to avoid repatriation to Laos. With consent of the authorities the temple became. Ban Vinai was closed in 1992, while the population in the temple grew to about 15,000.

Wat Tham Krabok is also famous for its drug rehabilitation program, which was started by Phra Chamroon in 1975. Thousands of drug addicts were cured, however the drug label backfired to the Hmong refugees. The authorities suspected them to be drug addicts and drug dealers, which culminated in April 2003, when the military ringed the temple with concertina wire and established strict controls on entering and leaving the area.

In 2004, the refugees began to be resettled to the United States, with about 1/3 heading to the U.S. state of Minnesota, though California and other states also received significant populations. It is the last major Hmong refugee camp in Thailand. It is estimated that about 300,000 people fled to that country, but nearly all have now left.

Resources

• http://www.refintl.org/cgi-bin/ri/bulletin?bc=00709
• Yearning to be Hmong at irrawaddy.org
• http://www.chiangmai1.com/news/hmong-article.shtml