Wat Phantao (วัดพันเตา) is an ancient Lanna-style temple with a wihaan (วิหาร), i.e. a prayer hall, made of teak wood. It is located in the old city centre of Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, where I arrived in a rickshaw. It is a royal temple under the Maha Nikaya (มหานิกาย), i.e. the ‘Great Sect’ and one of the two major denominations of the Thai Sangha (สงฆ์), the order of monks. It was built in 1391AD, around the same time as the neighbouring temple Wat Chedi Luang Worawihaan (วัดเจดีย์หลวงวรวิหาร), which at that time was named Wat Chotikaram (วัดโชติการาม), and for which Wat Phantao served as the sangkhawaat (สังฆาวาส), i.e. the monastery's residence area for monks. According to legend, the area of Wat Phantao was originally the location of a thousand kilns in which gold was smelted to cast the Attharot (อัฎฐารส) Buddha image, which is today enshrined in the wihaan or prayer hall of Wat Chedi Luang. When the casting was finished the townspeople built a temple in that area and named it Wat Phantao, i.e. the ‘Temple of the Thousand Kilns’. Behind the wihaan of Wat Phantao is a bell-shaped stupa or chedi on an octagonal base and surrounded by smaller pagodas. The temple houses various antiquities, including an ancient pulpit that was commissioned by Phra Chao Inthawichayanon (พระเจ้าอินทวิชยานนท์) in 1873 AD, together with the principal Buddha image in the wihaan, which in Thai is known as Wihaan Ho Kham (วิหารหอคำ). Its gilded  gable board features the motif of a peacock, decorated with pieces of coloured glass, an art form known as waen fah (แว่นฟ้า), i.e. ‘to embed with pieces of glass’, in which objects, figurines or statues are inlaid with mirrored-glass or sometimes coloured glass. The wihaan's gable board features on a Thai postage stamp issued in 1996 to commemorate Chiang Mai's 700th anniversary celebrations. Besides this, the peacock often appears in Lan Na-style architecture, in part as a remnant of a long Burmese occupation when it was ruled by successive vassal kings, while this royal bird is also celebrated in the northern-style Peacock Dance, which originates from Myanmar's Shan State, where the peacock is the symbol of the Konbaung Dynasty, i.e. the last dynasty that from 1752 to 1885 ruled Burma, to which Lan Na between 1558 and 1775 was a tributary state. In Myanmar's practice of Theravada  Buddhism and its relevant iconography, the peacock is a symbol for the sun, that ‒in combination with the rabbit, which represents the moon‒ signifies Enlightenment, akin to the Chinese characters for sun and moon, i.e. 日(ri) and 月 (yue), that when placed together as 明 (ming), become to mean ‘bright’, ‘clear’, or ‘to understand’. 回