Enchanted by an off-the-beaten-path city in Thailand

Thailand is famous among discerning tourists for its nightlife in Bangkok, its full moon parties on the island of Koh Phangan and its hedonistic pedestrian streets in Pattaya. It's also a magnet for the bohemian and wellness crowds who flock to the mountain destinations of Chiang Mai and Pai.

But Lampang, in northern Thailand, is the place most ignored by foreign tourists. This charming riverside town of approximately 90,000 inhabitants has retained the historic architecture and majestic squares of its days as an important city in the ancient Lanna kingdom and center of the teak wood trade. Centuries-old wooden temples and two-story teak mansions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries still stand, and along the Wang River, the streets of the Kat Kong Ta enclave are like an open-air museum of shophouses. well-preserved Chinese and European houses. gingerbread style buildings.

All over the city there are extremely friendly residents, as well as statues and images of chickens, from manhole covers to roundabouts. Chickens are the symbol of Lampang and appear on their ceramics, acclaimed throughout Thailand, including bowls and cups hand-painted with black and red roosters.

Lampang's charm comes not from amusements and attractions built for tourists, but from exploring integral parts of a functioning city. Commercial houses have been converted into boutiques and cafes. Ceramic factory shops are ideal for buying gifts. Even the horse carriages that run through the city carrying tourists were originally the main means of transportation for train passengers after the station opened in 1916.

Views of the river, khao soi and the power of Buddha

I first heard about Lampang in 2022, when my wife Susan and I moved to Chiang Mai and met a doctor named Lawrence Nelson, a retired research doctor known as Doc from the US National Institutes of Health. He recommended a visit, and in early January we finally began our five-day visit to Lampang on a spartan four-car train from Chiang Mai (for less than $1 each) on a 2.5-hour ride into the forested valley. that surrounds the city. .

You can find dozens of suitable homestays and hotels for less than $50 a night, and few are more expensive than that. We lucked out with a spacious room at Kanecha's Home, a homestay in the heart of the city overlooking the Wang River and the Ratsada Phisek Bridge, backed by a white dragon.

We cycled along the quiet riverside street, brilliantly reflecting the silver spiers of a temple, in search of a signature northern Thai dish, khao soi. We found a delicious version of curry noodle soup at roadside restaurant Jay Jay Chan (a sign with Thai writing that looks like “17” meant it was vegetarian), with a neat buffet station on the shaded sidewalk and a large wok gurgling. with vegetable soup. The total bill, 120 baht or about $3.40, includes several tasty black bean bars sprinkled with sesame seeds.

In the late afternoon, we wandered around the city. The weather was perfect, mid 80's, and the sky was full of cumulus clouds. We strolled through the grassy, ​​tree-shaded plaza, passing a stepped shrine with three tall teak pillars that locals wrapped with colorful ribbons for an auspicious start to 2024.

A square block market made of concrete was closing when we stopped at a flower shop on the sidewalk across the street. A man named Reangprakaiy Decha nodded and went on to say that his family has been selling bouquets of daisies, chrysanthemums and garlands of orange marigolds for offerings at the temple for 50 years.

Reangprakaiy, 39, meditates daily “to become smarter; Not to fool people, but to help them,” she stated. Why, I asked, did the city seem so peaceful and the people so friendly? She told us that she had to do with the power of a certain Buddha statue.

Nearby is a beautiful temple, Wat Phra Kaeo Don Tao Suchadaram, Reangprakaiy said, where legend says that in the 15th century, an elephant carrying Thailand's sacred Emerald Buddha statue strayed into Lampang and did not move. The statue was in the temple for 32 years. It is now enshrined in Bangkok's Grand Palace, but its energy remains, he said.

“We believe that the power of this Buddha statue is very strong,” Reangprakaiy said, “and it extends to make the Thai people peaceful and happy.”

Bananas and ubiquitous chicken dishes

Mornings are for the markets in Lampang, and before dawn, the main market on the north side of the Ratsada Phisek Bridge is a smorgasbord of everything from pig heads to live eels, from fried fish to fresh vegetables. As we approached the entrance, where orange-clad monks stood sentinel with their alms bowls, we found a model of ingenuity: a deconstructed plane tree. It was divided on a metal table into piles of fruit, flowers and stem (all edible) and piles of flat, dark green leaves, used throughout the market to wrap cooked delicacies such as bitter melon, pork and rice.

We then used the ride-hailing feature on the Grab app to take us to the next market, on the west side of the city and next to Nhong Krathing Park. We found dozens of bamboo stalls offering traditional breakfasts like quail eggs and rice flour muffins and perfectly poured coffee from regional farms. The strums of an amplified guitar and the tinkling of wind chimes mingled with the chatter of local residents dressed in running and cycling gear and squatting on small stools under a canopy of plum and fig trees.

That afternoon, we rented a motorcycle and headed two miles southeast to get to the bottom of the city's chicken fixation.

Local Thais tell the story of how Buddha came to the city and the deity Indra disguised himself as a rooster to ensure that the residents woke up to offer alms. A more recent explanation can be found at the Dhanabadee pottery factory, which claims to be the original source of Lampang's ubiquitous chicken bowls.

On a tour of the factory and museum, an English-speaking guide shared that the factory's founder moved from China in the 1950s and discovered that the local white kaolin mineral was ideal for making pottery. He opened a factory and, borrowing a motif popular in China for centuries, hand-painted chickens on cups and bowls. Admiration for Lampang chicken dishes spread throughout Thailand over the decades, and there are now dozens of workshops and factories producing chicken-adorned tableware.

'Good life this year'

Almost everywhere you look, there is a temple. We spent a day visiting a few, including Wat Phrathat Lampang Luang, built in the 15th century and considered one of the oldest teak buildings in Thailand.

Walking the grounds of a Buddhist temple in Thailand can be both fascinating and unnerving, and that's how Susan and I felt.

We came across a mysterious rope hanging from the 14-story stone stupa with golden spiers to the courtyard, and attached to the bottom of the clothesline was a succession of flowers, bells, streamers of Thai currency and a bolt of orange cloth. .

Just when I was regretting not having a tour guide, three Thai visitors approached us in the courtyard and asked if we wanted to know about the temple. The two men were old college friends, now in their 60s: one was an artist from Lampang and the other a developer, along with his wife, who divides their time between Bangkok and Atlanta.

The trio spent over an hour escorting us through the temple, and Cheerapanyatip Chamrak, the artist, explained the background of the rope. The offerings, he said, were thrown into the sky each night on this first weekend of the New Year, in prayer to Buddha “to protect you and have a good life this year.”

Wealth based on logging

After moving south of the city to the lush and tranquil Lampang River Lodge, to a teak and bamboo suite overlooking a water lily-covered pond, we met Doc for lunch at the first governor's gable-roofed house. of Lampang, built in the early 20th century and now occupied by the Baan Phraya Suren restaurant.

Delighted with our plates of basil fried rice and egg-topped pork and spicy grilled pork salad, we talked about how Doc met his wife, a native of Lampang, when she was working in the Washington, D.C. area, and how, after her first visit to Lampang in 2017, she soon helped support a local university's research into women's health.

He compared the city to Brigadoon, a mythical Scottish city that comes to life only one day every 100 years. “When I first went to nursing school I felt like I was in a black and white movie from the 1950s,” she said.

That afternoon we had a date to go back in time with Jantharaviroj Korn, whose great-grandfather came to Lampang from Burma 126 years ago to work for timber magnate Louis Leonowens, son of Anna, the British guardian of the king's children. of Siam, immortalized in the musical “The King and I”.

We meet Mr. Jantharaviroj, 60, at his grandfather's 108-year-old mansion. Thailand was a rarity in Southeast Asia in avoiding colonization by European powers, but the British obtained generous concessions on teak: the Thais did the hard work and many Burmese moved to the area with the British ( who had colonized Burma and exploited its teak) to serve as administrators and the timber magnates themselves, he said.

Jantharaviroj's family became rich from logging, he said, but his ancestors made peace by stripping teak forests.

“My grandfather believed that if we cut down the tree, we destroy the place where the spirit lives, that's why we have to build the temple,” he said, adding that his grandparents were important contributors to several Burmese-style temples in Lampang.

Our last day was reserved for the temple in the sky, Wat Phra Phutthabat Sutthawat, about an hour's drive north. The only local tour guide I could find was out of town and referred us to a young woman, who picked us up at 4am to see the sunrise at the top of the mountain. The problem was that the park office didn't open until 7:30.

The wait was worth it.

After lurching down a single-lane road in the bed of a pickup truck, we climbed steep stairs to a jagged limestone plateau with unadorned wooden altars perched on the rocks. We each had gongs or bells, and we each rang three times with a prayer, the reverberations merging with birdsong and a gentle breeze. We were alone as the fog evaporated from the forested floor half a mile below until a Dutch couple arrived, followed by a handful of retirees from Bangkok.

Twenty years ago, a monk, inspired by the bathtub-shaped impressions on the mountaintop said to be Buddha's footprints, had about 20 stupas built in the forest of stony peaks, some of them three-dimensional golden cones. flats, others shaped like round white bells. .

The views and energy of the place were so comforting that after 90 minutes I didn't want to leave. But we were hungry, and when we returned, we found the noodle and dumpling stalls opening for lunch. We installed a small plastic table on a porch to contemplate the stupas high in the sky.

As we ate a perfectly prepared papaya salad, we doubted there was a better lunch spot in Thailand.

Patrick Scott writes frequently for Travel. Follow him on Instagram: @patrickrobertscott