Lamphun province

Lamphun is in the Ping River valley. It is surrounded by mountain chains, with the Thanon Thong Chai Range in the west and the Khun Tan Range in the east of the province. It is some 670 kilometres north of Bangkok and 26 kilometres south of Chiang Mai. The total forest area is 2,588 km² (999 sq mi) or 57.8 percent of the provincial area.^[1] Lamphun is regarded as the smallest province of the northern region of Thailand.

Protected areas

Overview of protected areas of Lamphun
National park   1 Doi Chong   2 Mae Ping   3 Mae Takhrai   Wildlife sanctuary   10 Doi Pha Muang

Occupation of the basin is attested before Haripunchai. Three burial grounds with grave goods have been dated: Yang Thong Tai to 500 BCE–100 CE, San Pa Kha to 138–618 CE and Wang Hai to 478–578 CE. A site producing iron tools at Ban Hong is dated to 554–595 CE.^[7] Saiklang Jindasu, who reports them, states that the people who left this material are not definitely identified, and only that they were likely a group holding the lowland before the Dvaravati population arrived from Lavapura.^[7]: 291

Under its old name of Haripunchai, Lamphun was the northernmost city of the Mon kingdom of the Dvaravati period,^[8] and the last to fall to the Tai. The provincial government's account has it that in the late 12th century the city came under siege from the Khmer but did not fall.^[9] A Mon inscription from Vat Don, numbered LPh.01, records that King Sabbādhisiddhi was briefly ordained a monk on Tuesday 28 May 1219. His two sons attended, the teacher had reached the age of 82, and 80 monks and 102 novices resident in the temple, Jetavana, witnessed it. A hall for the rites of the monkhood had been built five years earlier.^{[a][10]: 46} The Lamphun inscriptions are the Mon corpus that H. L. Shorto's dictionary of the Mon inscriptions incorporates. Christian Bauer held that five Old Mon inscriptions recovered in Chiang Mai province, which the dictionary does not carry, antedate all of them.^[11]: 535

A king of Hariphunchai was for a time the favoured candidate for the donor of the Dong Mae Nang Mueang inscription of 1167 or 1168, found far to the south. George Cœdès proposed Ādityarāja or his successor Dhammikarāja, arguing from the Pali of its first face and from the bilingual Mon and Pali epigraphy soon to be cut at Lamphun. He withdrew the proposal on evidence that Lopburi had sent its own mission to China in 1155.^{[10]: 11–13}

Wyatt sets the peopling of the Ping valley apart from that of the Yom and the Nan. Families moving down the Ping from Lampang and Lamphun came from country already Mon in its culture, Theravada in religion and literate; those coming down the other two rivers did not.^{[10]: 37–39}

In 1281 Mangrai of Lan Na took the city and made it part of his kingdom. After Burmese expansion in the 16th century, Lamphun was under Burmese rule for two centuries. In the 18th century, with the rise of Thonburi and Bangkok against Burmese rule, local leaders from Lampang agreed to be their allies. Burmese rule ended, and Lamphun was ruled by relatives of Lampang's leader as a vassal of Bangkok. The administrative reforms of the late 19th century made Lamphun a province of Siam.^[9] Mon-speaking villages have also stood in the area of Lamphun and Lampang. McCormick and Jenny group them with the Thai Mon, communities thought to have originated in Burma in recent centuries.^[12]: 87

The provincial seal shows the temple Wat Phra That Haripunchai, which was already the main temple of the city Lamphun during Mon times. The gold-covered chedi is said to contain a relic of Buddha.

The provincial flower is the Flame of the Forest (Butea monosperma), and the provincial tree is the Rain Tree (Samanea saman). The provincial aquatic life is the chubby frog (Glyphoglossus molossus).

• Air: Lamphun is served by Lamphun Airport.
• Rail: Lamphun's main station is Lamphun Railway Station.

• Kaeng khae, a spicy curry consisting mainly of vegetables with chicken, frog, fish or snails.^[13]
• Kuaitiao lamyai, stewed pork noodles soup with dried longan, originated in Lamphun.^[14]

Health	Education	Employment	Income
77	32	18	34
Housing	Family	Transport	Participation
55	31	48	1
Province Lamphun, with an HAI 2022 value of 0.6416 is "average", occupies place 38 in the ranking.

Since 2003, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Thailand has tracked progress on human development at sub-national level using the Human achievement index (HAI), a composite index covering all the eight key areas of human development. National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) has taken over this task since 2017.^[3]

Map with provinces and HAI 2022 rankings

• 
  The Dvaravati-style chedi of Wat Phra That Hariphunchai
• 
  Lamphun Old City Wall