The royal cemeteryWat Suan Dok วัดสวนดอก

The royal cemetery

The ruling house of Chiang Mai. The white chedis hold their ashes, moved here in 1909.

Where: Suthep Road, about 1.5 km west of Suan Dok Gate · 18.78816, 98.96778 from OpenStreetMap
Open: 06:00–20:00 roughly
Cost: Free; a donation box at the chedis
Who is dead: The ruling house of Chiang Mai. The white chedis hold their ashes, moved here in 1909.
On: By bicycle, On a scooter, With a driver

A flower garden belonging to King Ku Na, given to a forest monk in 1370 and turned into a wat. The relic the monk brought split in two; half went up the mountain and became Doi Suthep.

The field of whitewashed chedis at the front is the Lanna royal cemetery — the Na Chiang Mai family and their predecessors, gathered from burial grounds around the city by Princess Dara Rasmi and set down in one place.

Late afternoon the whole field goes orange and then pink. It is the most photographed hour on this route and the reason a camera is worth carrying.

What is said to be there

The 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.

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

Making merit here

Bangsukun, 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 ผ้าบังสุกุล — A length of cloth laid out for a monk to take up, on behalf of someone dead. 150–500 ฿ for the cloth.
Pouring the water กรวดน้ำ — Pour a thin stream of water while the chanting runs, and say who it is for. Nothing.
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.

Wat Suan Dok — Panuwat Tansui · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

Yours would be better

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Sources for this stop

What	Who published it	Note
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