On a recent road trip with in-laws from Australia I was able to spend a few minutes at the lovely Wat Phra That Lampang Luang in Lampang. A few minutes is all I got, as Mrs Xangsamhua and the in-laws just raced in, paid respects and then were off. I did get a bit of a look at the murals, though, and was intrigued to see, among the scenes of court life and typical Siamese military engagements involving elephants, etc, representations of what appeared to be Caucasian troops with horses and rifles and wearing 19th century style uniforms with peaked caps.

I wondered why they were in the murals, as, to my knowledge, there was no military action involving Western armies in the area at any time. It also looked as though there were blue and grey uniforms involved, which made me think of the American Civil War.

Does anyone know more about these representations? I didn't learn anything by googling. The photo in the Lonely Planet page on the wat does show something of what I saw, but without the grey uniforms.

http://www.lonelyplanetimages.com/images/396382

Those murals are roughly a hundred years old, from an era in which there was plenty of contact with Western visitors, including soldiers, navies, and so on. The artists who painted them were Thai Lu from Nan and/or Luang Prabang, and were probably recording their observations (or other peoples' observations) of French troops.

Those murals are roughly a hundred years old, from an era in which there was plenty of contact with Western visitors, including soldiers, navies, and so on. The artists who painted them were Thai Lu from Nan and/or Luang Prabang, and were probably recording their observations (or other peoples' observations) of French troops.

Thank you. I didn't know that some of the artists were from Luang Prabang.