Wat Phantao

This guide to Wat Phantao in Chiang Mai follows the golden teak palace hall where the city's fifth Lanna ruler, Mahotaraprathet, died in 1854, and the court's decision not to abandon it but to keep its wood. Workers later dismantled the twenty-eight-pillar hall and moved it a short distance to become the modest viharn standing here now. Look up at the gable above the entrance for a small gilded dog carved into the wood, the old king's own zodiac animal.