Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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To Lamphun
Along the Road of Histories

Text & Images : Terryl

Last weekend, my parents and a friend of my mom's came up to visit me in Chiang Mai and put my head in a spin by having me arrange a `fun' trip for them.

Well, `fun' is pretty subjective. It's also wide-ranging but I could hardly plausibly suggest late night bar-hopping as a possibility. Wouldn't paint the right picture - or at least not the appropriate picture - of my life up here. So eventually, I decided to take them to Wat Phrathat Hariphunchai in Lamphun, for obvious reasons.

Firstly, getting there's easy. There's no big risk or adventure involved, and nothing either that would get my little old Peugeot in trouble on the way there. Plus, it's a convenient distance from Chiang Mai and takes less than an hour along a road so jam-packed with history that I could be sure of keeping their interest up the whole way. This definitely wouldn't kill my parents and their friend.

So, we took off late after having some breakfast. If you're traveling from Chiang Mai, start your journey in front of the TAT Office and just keep heading south on the Chiang Mai - Lamphun road. As the name suggests, this is the road to Thailand's oldest continuously-inhabited town.

Oh, and from Nonghoi Market to roughly a few kilometers before arriving in Lamphun, anyone couldn't help but be intrigued by the gigantic roadside yang trees (that's Dipterocarpus alatus Roxb.ex G.Don for scientific reference). The planting of these trees dates back to 1882, when the great reforming King Rama V demanded a dramatic change in Chiang Mai's landscaping. It's said that locals who didn't want to be recruited to join the military were ordered to plant these young trees at either side of the Lamphun road. An interview of mine with old Prince Tawin na Chiang Mai, who was then 94, revealed that, simultaneously, locals in other areas were ordered to undertake similar tasks in their areas, with the result that teak and pine trees were planted on the roads around the Chiang Mai moat, Burmese padauk on the road to Doi Saket, and Siamese Cassia on Chiang Mai - Hangdong road.

A little further on this historic route to Lamphun is a place with an even greater historical significance - Wiengkumkam (spelling variations may include Viengkumkam and Weang Kumkam, etc.) This is an ancient community that has just recently been excavated. Although the word wieng (a dialect variant of `Chiang' as in Chiang Mai) means `town' and suggests an image of a big excavated site of older civilization, the true face of Wiengkumkam is altogether different.

Whatever the original reality, what you see now on visiting the location is a number of small temples and shrines. They are scattered here and there, intermingled with the houses of people now settled in what measures roughly half a square kilometer of the Tha Wangtarn sub-district. As you can learn from other tourist guides, this old city was originally founded by King Mengrai as his capital, but soon succumbed to the kind of flooding Chiang Mai itself is still subject to. The city was covered in its entirety with debris, sand, and mud. Over the succeeding centuries, Mengrai having founded the city we now live in, subsidence and the accretion of silt covered the old temples and other buildings and people started settling on this area again.

It was back in 1984 when locals dug up valuable Buddha images from one of the old sites that the authorities learnt that underneath this peaceful village was the old capital that was thought to have been lost forever. The funny thing is that when the local people learnt what they were living on top of, they tried not to let the word - or the artifacts that were so valuable - get out, since they realised that once the authorities had understood the value of what had been their home, they would be subject to land appropriation, with very little coming their way as compensation...which is indeed what eventually happened.

If you want to stop there and look around, the signposting is pretty easy to follow. Be sure to stop first at either Wat Chedi Liem or the Wiengkumkam information center, where you can get a concise picture of the entire area and decide how to continue from there. You can use their bus service with a knowledgeable guide, or take the horse carriage if you travel alone - or simply do it yourself.

Back on our trip, my mom deemed the little walks around the ancient ruins a bit mother-unfriendly, so we just kept going straight to Lamphun.

The modern day Lamphun is a successor to the historical Hariphunchai kingdom which in ancient times flourished long before the Lanna kingdom or Siam existed. According to the old chronicles, the city was founded by a holy person (a rsi or hermit) called Wasuthep, some time in the first century (660 A.D.) who summoned labourers from the ethnic Mon community in the area to do the city-building work. The first ruler of Hariphunchai, chosen and invited by the founding hermit, was (surprise!) a Queen called Chamadevi, believed to be the daughter of a Mon king in Lopburi. Interestingly, a philological study points out a possible connection between the word Chama and Shan, and also, although a bit more distantly, Siam.

In a nutshell, Queen Chamadevi ascended the throne in 663 A.D., and ruled for seven years. Although her reign was short, she started the era of a dynasty that lasted 630 years, and saw the succession of some 46 rulers of her line.

The temple where her ashes have been housed is now called, unsurprisingly, Wat Chamadevi, or locally, Wat Ku-kut, after the broken-topped stupa within its compound. This was the temple where the queen took refuge and lived in solitude as a nun long after she gave up the throne.

Well, to tell the truth, we didn't go there either, even though it was near by. That's not because my mom doesn't enjoy two-in-one promotions, but because we didn't want to be diverted from this ancient road of history. Instead, we went direct to Wat Phrathat Hariphunchai, which is located right in the heart of Muang (city) Lamphun. So, if you're coming from Chiang Mai as we were, keep an eye out for the Hariphunchai National Museum on the right. Wat Phrathat Haripunchai is on your left, nearly opposite the museum.

In the parking lot, just like at any other tourist attraction, street vendors flourish, selling products from iced beverages to lottery tickets and handicraft souvenirs. Well, it's probably true that unless you're really hungry, the tidbits on offer here are not really worth sampling so you can do as we did - ignore them and proceed to the temple.

Once inside the temple wall, we went to get the customery offerings - toob, tien, dork mai - in this case a lotus flower, three incense sticks and a small orange/yellow candle. These are usually offered free, though you may be asked to make a donation to the temple in a box provided for that purpose.

The phrathat (main stupa) Hariphunchai is similar to phrathat Doi Suthep in many ways. Outwardly it's a golden stupa with a rectangular-shaped base, enclosed by a small railing to prevent people from approaching too close to the ancient edifice. What's less well known about it is that this ancient stupa is approximately twice as large as its counterpart in Chiang Mai. However, similarly it has a dark grey-carpeted walkway around the stupa railing to allow those who want to walk around it while praying to do so, before they finally leave their offerings on the northern side.

We were there on a Sunday, so the traffic of worshippers marching around the phrathat was quite heavy. These included the all-too-obvious tourists (whom you can spot from miles away with their cameras and all those ugly hats and sunglasses, just like me and my family) and locals.

As I'm never interested in walking in the sun, a stroll around with my old-time digital camera seemed a better choice than accompanying my mother, who seemed immediately at home with the business of making merit in the customary way - as she certainly is.

It was unfortunate that while we were there, parts inside the main vihara (chapel) were being reconstructed, and bamboo scaffolding obstructed clear views of the gleaming and majestic Buddha images. Hopefully when this magazine reaches you, this work will have been completed.

Another attraction lies to the north of the vihara. There is a tower housing a large gong that, like temple bells you find in abundance in any popular temple in Chiang Mai, calls out to the visitor to come and strike it. The tower itself is a complex piece of architecture, while the sole gong there is quite a remarkable work with old scriptures engraved on the metal surface, which for me called up the mystic inscriptions on Frodo's One Ring.

I heard somewhere you should ring temple bells to tell the gods you have made merit at the temple. Now this is either the kind of story parents invent to answer their children's otherwise unanswerable questions, or an example of the seamless mixture that has occurred in Southeast Asia between Buddhist and Hindu beliefs. Anyway, the children seem to like the explanation, so it serves its purpose.

Now, real history lovers like my dad might cross the street to enjoy other artifacts and more authentic stories in the museum. This however was not the case for my mom and her cheerful friend, who brought my carefully-constructed tour to an end by saying, "We've had all the history we can take. Now where's the shopping bazaar?"

Well, ladies and gentlemen, history has its place, no question. But sometimes it has to give way to present realities.

Text & Images : Terryl