Lak Meuang

Lonely Planet review

A wooden pillar containing the city guardian (Lak Meuang) is housed in this shrine, at the southeastern corner of Sanam Luang. The pillar was placed here at the founding of the new capital and today worshippers come and make offerings by commissioning traditional dances or delivering severed pigs' heads decorated with incense.

Like the sacred banyan trees and the holy temples, Lak Meuang receives daily supplications from Thai worshippers, some of whom commission classical Thai dancers to perform lákhon kâe bon (shrine dancing) as thanks for granted wishes. Offerings also include those morbidly cute pigs' heads with sticks of incense sprouting from their foreheads.

Lak Meuang is across the street from the eastern wall of Wat Phra Kaew, at the southern end of Sanam Luang.