News from Phrae

Phrae is a small and tranquil historic city dated more than 1,200 years old situated in the beautiful North of Thailand about 550 km. from Bangkok.

Since September 2006, SEAMEO-SPAFA, in collaboration with the Thai Fine Arts Department, has been working on an awareness-raising programme on local heritage preservation with a group of primary school children from the Huakuang Temple Municipality School in Phrae.

This on-going project involves 15-20 students from the Huakuang Temple Municipality School. The children have been participating in different once-a-month awareness-raising activities on heritage preservation of Phrae historic city. The activities have been conducted in collaboration with a local civil network known as "Luk Lan Muang Phrae", the Huakuang Temple Municipality School, the local community of the Huakuang village, as well as the Phrae Municipality.

Completed activities include city wall walks, tours of historic places, museums, and temples, participation in local cultural and religious activities, revival of local songs, food, and tales, as well as handicrafts. The results of the project will be published later this year. Please check this space to see different updates each month!

If you are interested to learn more about this project, contact Jay at patchy@seameo-spafa.org

Huakuang temple with a 600 year-old pagoda which is also the location of the Huakuang Temple Municipality School

A walk along the Phrae ancient city wall

Children learn to cook a kind of traditional sweets from a village elder.

A visit to a historic museum which used to be the Residence of Phrae Governor

Children learn the process of making natural indigo dye known in Thai as “Moh Hom”, which is traditional to Phrae.

Children wearing natural indigo-dyed t-shirts which they made themselves using tie-dye technique.

Children taking turn to record their village's song “Huakuangnusson” (Memory of Huakuang).

Village elders teach the children to sing traditional songs.

A visit to a temple museum “Wat Luang” which exhibits collections of Buddha images, Buddhist palm-leaf manuscripts, ancient weapons, as well as other artifacts.