Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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Magnificent Creatures at Wat Changkham

Text : Terryl
Photos: Karin

This was one of the weirdest trip that I ever joined in. Visiting Wieng Kum Kam, we ended up finding several great concrete sculptures of mythical characters.

Said to be one of the earliest establishments of the Lanna kingdom, Wieng Kum Kam over on the east side of the Ping River is said to have been founded by King Mang Rai, the first king of the Lanna dynasty, in 1286. Eventually, the site proved to be fatally prone to flooding, and the king refounded his royal city in 1296, more or less where we find the old city now, over on the west bank. However, that ten year spell turned out to be long enough for the king and his people to establish and start to exhibit the cultural brilliance through architecture that we can still find traces of today.

In the meantime, the old centre on the east bank still existed, but when further severe flooding was visited upon it, and the Burmese during one of their periods of aggressive expansionism conquered Lanna, the city was lost as a habitable centre of culture, and eventually - such was the accumulation of sediments laid down upon it - disappeared almost completely, though farmers still built their houses where its magnificence had once shone.

In fact, it wasn’t until 1974 that the ruins of Wat Changkham were chanced upon, triggering an interest in this lost period of the North’s history, the archaelogists systematically uncovering more and more of the ancient city’s formerly splendid foundations, so that Wieng Kum Kham began once again to enjoy the light.

This then, is the site I and my friends went to visit last month, and the afternoon we spent there turned out to be well spent indeed.

The first place we looked at - and you really need a map to follow our movements - was Wat Chedi Liem (‘The Temple with the Square Chedi’). This is a good starting point since you can hop onto a tram that will carry you conveniently at B.15 per ride. Or if you’re feeling more flush (and romantic) you can splash out for a horse and carriage for a mere B.200. Though before you set off from here it’s worth taking a look at the temple. The chedi is in what’s known as the Haripunchai style, after the North’s oldest city, now known as Lamphun and with some 1,200 years of habitation behind it. And in fact in Lamphun, at the temple named after the Queen said to be the city’s first ruler, Queen Chamadevi, is a chedi in exactly the same style, square based and stepped, with niches to hold an array of Buddha images.

From Wat Chedi Liem, though, we continued through some pretty flooded areas - hasn’t anyone come up with a sensible and rational plan for dealing with the floods we’re prone to - and have suffered much from in the rainy season just past? The answer appears to be ‘no’!

At Wat Changkham or Wat Kan Thom, the major attraction to many is perhaps the majestically-built vihara entitled, ‘Hor Phaya Mangrai,’ built in 1444. This wooden building has intricate carvings in wood and gold.

However, it was the relatively less prominent components in this temple that intrigued me, the abundant mythical creatures that seemed to turn it into a part of the fabulous Himaphan Forest that we know so well from Thai literature.

Upon entering the compound, the first thing to take your eye is a troop of concrete rachasingh (literally translated as the Royal Lion) lined up around a burial ground. It is definitely a rather important example of the handiwork of the Chiang Mai salah (artisans). However, up on a concrete corner of the wall stood a magnificent creature that I had seen nowhere else. This strange piece of statuary had the head and torso of Hanuman the monkey warlord in The Ramayana, and its body from the waist down was that of a garuda. The details were obviously not old, or at least not as old as other components of the temple. A nearby food vendor lady told us that the statue was a recent addition of less than ten years old. The creature was the sole creation of a local craftsman. Very intriguing!

A little further north of the monkey-bird, standing proud near the Lanna style chedi was a great Subannahongsa, or Golden Swan. It’s part of Thai belief that the Subannahongsa is connected to the supreme monarch, as perhaps best shown in the royal vessel that appears yearly on the Chao Phraya River, which has this creature’s name. The concrete structure was definitely a work of a much later craftsmanship with central Thai influence; as such belief only appeared in Thai lore in the late Ayudhaya period and early Ratanakosin era.

Now, to the east of the chedi is the elaborate vihara. In front of the building was another fabulous creature – the seven- headed naga. Legend has it that this Lord Naga came to protect the Lord Buddha from a storm at the time of his enlightenment. Although a common enough feature of almost all temples, this one is exceptional in being so powerfully alive and aggressive-looking that there might be visitors who would feel uneasy to be anywhere near it. But it’s worth a good look by the stouter-hearted tourist.

Then, further out to the back of the temple, we walked into a green garden with statuettes of modern-day, non-mythical animals scattered around this garden. These were little cutie zebras with yellow and black stripes, tigers, pelicans, tortoises, and larger-than-life frogs. Seems like you don’t need a night safari here anyway. In this same garden, we found yet another mythical figure, the kontan, which is the eastern version of the Greek muse. However, the kontan is all male. And this kontan figure (if you have time to visit this temple), has the cutest moustache I’ve ever seen.

It was unfortunate that not much information was provided for each of these figures. If you want to know about each one, take photos and show them to your Thai friends. They might be able to identify them and add to your store of arcane Thai.