Laplae Town Gateway Arch

A single eggshell-yellow arch spans the road into Laplae, Uttaradit’s district town famous for a legend about a place where nobody could lie. Built in a modified Sukhothai style — about 10 metres high and 41 metres long — the arch carries a “Laplae City” sign designed by the Fine Arts Department. It’s not a ruin or a fortification; despite the English name “Pichai City Wall,” there’s no ancient brick wall to walk along here.

The “Pichai” in the name traces back to how this area was governed, not to a separate town. Before modern provincial boundaries were drawn, Uttaradit was administered as Mueang Phichai — the same historic name behind Phraya Phichai Dap Hak, Uttaradit’s most famous son — and Laplae fell inside that old jurisdiction. Some English-language tourism listings, including the one this page draws its title from, still carry the older “Pichai” name rather than “Laplae.”

Laplae itself has two stories behind its name. One holds that the district’s winding, easy-to-lose roads made it feel hidden from outsiders (“lap lae”). The other points to Doi Mon Rishi, a hill said to have once blocked the evening sun over a dense forest that carried the same name. A nearby monument depicts the local legend of the Widow of Laplae, tied to the same folklore.

Watch out: Don’t come expecting archaeology — this is a modern commemorative structure, not a historical excavation site. The interest here is the folklore and the adjoining museum, not ruins.

The arch sits right beside the Laplae Museum, which covers the same folklore and the district’s history in far more depth, and makes a natural half-day pairing with the rest of Uttaradit’s Laplae-district sights.