The gate the dead went throughSuan Prung Gate
ประตูสวนปรุง
The gate the dead went through
Six centuries of them, all outbound
Hartmann Linge · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
- Where
- South-west corner of the moat · 18.78150, 98.98182 triangulated from NaN's GoPro ride, 24 Sep 2026: due north of frame GSAA3729_134, where the gate's plaque stands beside the bike, and on the camera's 52° bearing from frame GSAA3729_136, which shows the gate square-on; within about 15 m
- Open
- A road junction. Any hour.
- Cost
- Free
- Who is dead
- Six centuries of them, all outbound
- On
- On foot, By bicycle
Built in 1411 at the order of the wife of Prince Saen Muang Ma, later than the other four gates. For as long as the wall meant anything, this was the gate a corpse left by — carried out west and south to the burning ground — and the gate executions were done at.
It is a traffic junction now, with a rebuilt brick face and a crossing that takes a while.
Stand on the outside of it and look back in. That is the direction that mattered.
Executions at the gate, by driving a sharpened stake into the stomach, and every corpse in the city carried out through the same arch for six hundred years. Both classes of ผีตายโหง in one doorway, in bulk. It is a traffic junction now with a rebuilt brick face, and the people who cross it on foot at two in the morning are not thinking about it, and the taxi drivers who will not stop there are.
Told here, with a source
Where this is arguedCitylife and Chang Puak both give 1411 and both give the two uses. The name's derivation — suan as garden, or as the thrust of a spear — is folk etymology either way.
Making merit here
Nothing here is set up to receive an offering, so leave no food or wax on the brick. Carry the act a few minutes south on Wualai to Wat Muen San and put it in the name of whoever went out through this gate unnamed.
กสิณธร ราชโอรส · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
NaN Peacock · CC BY 4.0 ·
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