A scooter reaches the mountain, the giants' shrine and the buried capital in one day, which nothing else on this site does without a driver. It is also the way most people in Chiang Mai get anywhere.
Hire: 200–350 ฿ a day for a 110–125 cc automatic, 600–1,200 ฿ for something bigger, quoted around the old city in September 2026. Leave a cash deposit rather than a passport. Check them, they move.
Tharrawaddy Min, son of Bayinnaung, who ruled Lanna 1578–1607 — his ashes in the chedi
What is said to be thereTharrawaddy Min governed this city for thirty years and his ashes are in the melon chedi, in a Shan wat, in a Thai town, and Burma is where he was from. The northern category for a dead person nobody at home can feed is the hungry one. The Shan community has kept this wat and its rites going round him for four hundred years, which is one way of answering the problem.
HereA tray, dedicated to a foreign dead person buried far from home. The Shan community will know exactly what you are doing. (Tan khan khao — the tray of rice, Offering a tung, Pouring the water)
1.1 km on from the last one, by road
Nobody in particular. What is kept here is the office, not the man.
What is said to be thereLords changed their clothes here before going through the gate, and lords riding out to war stopped here on the way. Both directions. What a place like that accumulates, in the northern reckoning, is the office rather than the officers — the ones who came back and the ones who did not are equally present, and equally uninterested in you.
HereA tray, in the name of somebody who held an office and had to hand it on. It is what the place is for. (Tan khan khao — the tray of rice, Khan tang — the tray for a spirit, Pouring the water)
2.4 km on from the last one, by road
Members of the Mangrai line, in and around the brick chedi
What is said to be thereThe Mangrai line is in and around the brick, and the wall was the reason: royal ash went outside it. The dead were kept on the far side of the line the living lived inside, close enough to be fed and far enough not to be underfoot. Stand here at dusk and the geography is the whole belief, laid out flat.
HereA tung. The poles are along the wall and the wat sells the banners at the office. (Offering a tung, Pouring the water)
3.0 km on from the last one, by road
The ruling house of Chiang Mai. The white chedis hold their ashes, moved here in 1909.
What is said to be thereThe white chedis are not where these people were first buried. Princess Dara Rasmi had the Lanna royal dead gathered up from grounds all over the city in 1909 and brought here into one field. Moving a grave is the thing the northern rites are most careful about, and this was moving a dynasty. Whatever was done to settle them was done in 1909 and the field has been quiet since, which people here will tell you is not an accident.
HereBangsukun, at the hall behind the chedis. If there is a service running for someone else's family, stand at the back and pour water with them; nobody minds. (Pha bangsukun — the cloth, Pouring the water, Tan khan khao — the tray of rice)
2.6 km on from the last one, by road
A field of broken Buddha images, collected from wats that failed
What is said to be thereThe story told about the tunnels is that they were cut and painted with trees and birds for a monk who wandered, so that he could go somewhere without leaving. It is repeated everywhere and sourced nowhere.
HereA lamp in the tunnel niches, where the wat allows it, and sweeping outside. The image field takes no offering — it is a resting place, not a shrine. (Sweeping, Lighting a pang pratip, Pouring the water)
9.7 km on from the last one, by road
Nobody. This is a stop in someone else's funeral procession.
What is said to be thereHalfway up, in the trees, on a stream. ผีขุนน้ำ is the spirit at a water source and นางไม้ is the one in a tree, and this wat is built into both. The elephant carrying the relic stopped here to rest and went on, which makes the place a pause in a funeral procession rather than the end of one — and a pause is where things wait.
HereWater into the stream. It runs down into the city. (Pouring the water, Sweeping)
6.3 km on from the last one, by road
The elephant, and the half-relic it carried
What is said to be thereThe elephant climbed with half a relic on its back, reached the top, turned round three times, trumpeted three times, knelt, and died. They built the chedi on the spot and that is the whole founding of the holiest address in the north: an animal that walked itself to death and chose the ground.
HereThree circuits of the chedi clockwise with lotus, incense and candle — the set is sold at the top of the stairs for about 20 ฿. Then water. (Lighting a pang pratip, Pouring the water, Sai khan dok — flowers in the bowl)
24.9 km on from the last one, by road
Pu Sae and Ya Sae, who ate the people who lived here, and stopped
What is said to be thereThey ate people. Not a figure of speech and not a warning to children — the legend says they took the townspeople day after day until the town emptied and whoever was left ran. Then the Buddha came and taught them, and they took the five precepts and gave up killing, and immediately asked whether the precepts could make an exception, because they still had to eat. One person a month. Refused. One a year. Refused.
HereGarlands at the wat. A khan tang for the two of them at their shrine below. They are not asked for merit — they are asked for leave, and thanked for keeping to the bargain. (Khan tang — the tray for a spirit, Pouring the water)
11.5 km on from the last one, by road
A whole town's worth, under three metres of river sand
What is said to be thereA capital under three metres of river sand, and the wats coming back out of it one at a time since 1984 — below the level of the road, between houses, with washing strung up over them. The story people bring to it is a city that went on underneath, which is a folk tale and is told as one. The part that is not folklore is that these are graves and shrines that were covered while in use, and that the people whose gardens they are in have been living on the roof of them for five hundred years.
HereWat Chang Kham is a working wat standing on top of the buried one, and takes a tray or a lamp. At the excavated ruins, nothing — they are archaeology, and wax marks brick. (Lighting a pang pratip, Offering a tung, Pouring the water)
4.6 km on from the last one, by road
Missionaries, teak men, consuls, soldiers, and people who died here last year
What is said to be thereTwenty-four rai of people who were buried by the rites of somewhere else. No tray in the morning, no monk, no water poured at the root of a tree, no banner with the name on it — none of the things the rest of this route is about. By the reckoning of the city they are lying in, that is the description of a dead person with nobody making merit for them, and there are over a thousand of them under the trees beside a golf course.
HereNot a Buddhist ground, so no tray and no monk. Water at the root of a tree and the names read off the stones out loud is the form that fits. Take the rubbish out with you. (Pouring the water, Sweeping)
1.7 km on from the last one, by road
The drowned, who in northern telling do not leave the water
What is said to be thereผีพราย: the drowned, who in the northern classification do not move on, because the water keeps them. The belief has a mechanism attached — one of them gets out by putting somebody else in — and it is the reason a northern grandmother will not let a child swim in the Ping at dusk, and the reason the lamps go downstream at Loi Krathong rather than up.
HereA lamp floated, or water poured off the parapet. Loi Krathong is this by the hundred thousand, and the rest of the year the act is the same act. (Lighting a pang pratip, Pouring the water)