A father's ashesWat Phra Singh วัดพระสิงห์

A father's ashes

Kham Fu, fourth king of the Mangrai line — the chedi was raised for his ashes in 1345

CEphoto, Uwe Aranas · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

Where: West end of Ratchadamnoen, inside the moat · 18.78821, 98.98138 from OpenStreetMap
Open: 06:00–20:00 roughly
Cost: 40 ฿ for non-Thais at the gate, as posted 2026
Who is dead: Kham Fu, fourth king of the Mangrai line — the chedi was raised for his ashes in 1345
On: On foot, By bicycle

King Pha Yu built the chedi to hold his father's remains and the wat grew around it. The small Lai Kham hall to the side holds the Phra Singh image and a set of murals that are the best surviving record of what daily life in the north looked like.

The image itself has three cities claiming to hold the original. Chiang Mai's claim is one of them.

What is said to be there

Two sets of remains, of different kinds. King Kham Fu's ashes are in the chedi, and his son built it to put them there. The Phra Singh image in the Lai Kham hall is the other kind: an image that old, moved that often and claimed by three cities at once is treated in the north as a resident rather than an object — something that consented to be where it is and could stop consenting.

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

Where this is arguedWhich Phra Singh is the Phra Singh. Chiang Mai, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Bangkok each hold an image under the name.

Making merit here

Morning. A tray at the hall behind the chedi, with a name on it. The wat is busy enough that there is always a monk free before eleven.

Tan khan khao — the tray of rice ตานขันข้าว — A tray of food handed to a monk in a named dead person's name. 50–200 ฿ for a tray bought at the wat gate. Made at home it costs what the food costs.
Pouring the water กรวดน้ำ — Pour a thin stream of water while the chanting runs, and say who it is for. Nothing.
Pha bangsukun — the cloth ผ้าบังสุกุล — A length of cloth laid out for a monk to take up, on behalf of someone dead. 150–500 ฿ for the cloth.

Wat Phra Singh — Nawit science · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

Yours would be better

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Sources for this stop

What	Who published it	Note
Things that go bump in the night — Chiang Mai's most haunted	Chiang Mai Citylife
ผี ไม่ได้มีแค่สยองขวัญ เมื่อ 'ผีล้านนา' คือการปกปักรักษา	Lanner	the Lanna split between ผีดี and ผีร้าย, and what เสื้อบ้าน เสื้อเมือง are
คำเรียกผีและความเชื่อเรื่องผีในภาษาไทยถิ่นเหนือ	Veridian E-Journal, Silpakorn University	the northern names for the dead, collected and classified