Ghost Chiang Mai

Where a ruler changed his clothesWat Chiang Yuen วัดเชียงยืน

Where a ruler changed his clothes

Nobody in particular. What is kept here is the office, not the man.

Chainwit. · CC BY 4.0 · Commons
Where
Mani Nopparat Road, just outside the north moat, east of Chang Phueak Gate · 18.79635, 98.98868 from OpenStreetMap
Open
Daylight
Cost
Free
Who is dead
Nobody in particular. What is kept here is the office, not the man.
On
On foot, By bicycle, On a scooter

Mangrai built Wat Chiang Man first and named it for being secure. He built this one next and named it for lasting.

It is the เดชเมือง — the city's standing. A lord coming to rule Chiang Mai, or a lord riding out to a war, stopped here, changed his robes, and paid respects to the principal image before he went through the gate. Governors still come.

Outside the wall, north, on the road the army used.

What is said to be there

Lords 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.

The kind of dead this kind of place holds, in northern reckoning

Making merit here

A tray, in the name of somebody who held an office and had to hand it on. It is what the place is for.

Wat Chiang Yuen
Chainwit. · CC BY 4.0 · Commons

Yours would be better

Every picture here was taken by someone else for some other reason. Upload yours to Commons under a free licence and the next build of this page will use it, with your name on it.

Sources for this stop

WhatWho published itNote
วัดเชียงยืน (อำเภอเมืองเชียงใหม่)Wikipedia (ไทย)Chiang Man means secure, Chiang Yuen means enduring; the second was built after the first
วัดเชียงยืน เดชเมืองเชียงใหม่Top Chiang Mairecords the robe-changing before a ruler entered the city
ผี ไม่ได้มีแค่สยองขวัญ เมื่อ 'ผีล้านนา' คือการปกปักรักษาLannerthe Lanna split between ผีดี and ผีร้าย, and what เสื้อบ้าน เสื้อเมือง are
คำเรียกผีและความเชื่อเรื่องผีในภาษาไทยถิ่นเหนือVeridian E-Journal, Silpakorn Universitythe northern names for the dead, collected and classified