Wat Suan Dok takes its name, the flower garden monastery, from the royal pleasure grounds it replaced when it was founded in the Lanna era, west of Chiang Mai's walled city. Its layout is unusual and highly cinematic. A large gilded chedi, traditionally held to enshrine a relic of the Buddha, rises behind a wide, open-sided assembly hall whose glass-inlaid columns catch the afternoon sun. Beside it stands what makes the temple unmistakable: a group of whitewashed funerary chedis, of varying heights and profiles, containing the ashes of members of the Chiang Mai royal family. Arranged in the open with the forested ridge of Doi Suthep behind them, they turn the compound into one of the most photographed spaces in northern Thailand, particularly at dusk. The monastery is also a place of study, with resident monks following courses at the Buddhist university attached to the site and regularly meeting visitors for conversation in English. The film sets Lanna history, funerary practice and contemporary monastic education within a single enclosure.
