What better place to feel alive than surrounded by death?
Every day hundreds of mortals gather at the Bangkok’s Teochew Chinese Cemetery near Sathon Road to sweat, run, picnic and play, surrounded by hundreds of old tombs.
Most know the place as Pa Cha Wat Don (graveyards of Wat Don). A burial site for Chinese immigrants at the turn of the 20th Century, the cemetery was opened in 1900 by the Teochew Association of Thailand.
Some of those immigrants are said to still haunt the land.
On the 100 Rai area of Pa Cha Wat Don, the most haunted area is said to be a corner reserved for lonely, dead men with no relatives. Thirty years ago the cemetery had become a ruined mess that people avoided, largely because of frequent sightings of ghosts. Taxi drivers were reluctant to stop there, because they risked pulling a way with a ghost passenger fare.
But in 1996, Pa Cha Wat Don was renovated to be a public park which preserved the graveyards.
Teochew is a word for a Chinese group native to eastern Guangdong province who speak Teochew dialect. Most Teochew left China in diaspora and now live throughout Southeast Asia. Many of Thailand’s ethnic Chinese-Thai descend from Teochew immigrants.
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