Wat Tham Krabok abbot Luang Phor Chamroune Panchan gave the Hmong a warning before he died five years ago at age 73.
“He said to the Hmong, ‘After I die, watch the pond inside the temple. When the pond dries up, then that’s a sign the Hmong must leave these grounds,’” said Nhia La Chang, 72, a 12-year resident of the Buddhist temple turned refugee camp.
The sign came in March, Chang said, when the refugees noticed that a large number of fish in the temple pond were dying. The water level dropped each day until it was gone.
“I saw it with my own eyes. I wasn’t sure what to think,” Chang said. “But Father’s (Panchan’s) words have revisited us. And, since he was good to the Hmong, we trust that, perhaps, he knew things he couldn’t say and the pond was his way of warning us that it is no longer in our best interest to stay here.”
Chang said that’s why he and so many other Hmong refugees have accepted the U.S. government’s invitation to resettle in America, despite fears of struggling in a new land. They revere the late abbot, part of a legendary duo whose wisdom, guidance and kindness are believed to have protected and preserved the Hmong people.
Wat Tham Krabok, in central Thailand, also serves as a drug rehabilitation center where the monks help people from all over the world, including Hmong, kick drug addiction.
When the Vietnam War ended and the U.S. military left the region, the Hmong of Laos who had helped the CIA fled to Thailand to escape persecution by the communist rulers of their homeland.
Panchan was sympathetic to the Hmong plight and welcomed the refugees to the temple grounds after United Nations refugee camps closed in the early 1990s.
The U.S. resettlement offer came in December 2003 after the government of Thailand announced it would close Wat Tham Krabok.
This summer, some of the camp’s 15,000 refugees began trickling into states such as California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Chang and his 20-member family will be joining a daughter and her family in Appleton.
An American monk living at Wat Tham Krabok, known only as Gordon, said he met Panchan there 23 years ago. “Call him legendary, a man beyond comparison, a man whose ideas of a humane society were rooted into him,” said Gordon, 50.
While Panchan, referred to by the Hmong as “Father,” is credited for his kindness, the most revered figure tied to Wat Tham Krabok is Luang Phor Yaai, whom the Hmong call “Luam Meb,” or “Mother.”
Yaai, who died in 1970, is believed to have been the force that guided the Hmong to the temple.
Today, the story of “Luam Meb” is one nearly all Hmong in the camp can recite from memory.
Chang said the story begins decades ago, long before the Vietnam War ended and anyone in the vicinity of Wat Tham Krabok had heard of the Hmong.
The story goes like this:
A group of Thais saw a figure appear between two Buddha statues in the cliffs near the temple and heard two booming sounds. They ran toward the figure with a gun, but it disappeared.
Several days later, the Thais returned and saw two pleated skirts, colorfully decorated with needlework, hanging on a curved tree branch. The skirts were identified as those worn by the Hmong Leng, one of two groups of Hmong identified by their dialect and traditional costumes.
The next day, the skirts were gone.
The Thais called up to the cliffs, “Are you human or a spirit?” The voice of a woman answered back that she was human. “Then come down and talk to us,” the Thais said.
“Will you try to kill me?” the woman asked. She was told no.
Yaai, who had been living in a cave in the cliffs, climbed down on a ladder the Thais built.
They told her she had to go to Bangkok and meet with the Thai government.
A car was ordered to pick her up, but it burst into flames as she tried to enter. The Thais then brought a truck, but it sank into the ground. Then, a helicopter was called, but it crashed.
The Thais decided to build a home for Yaai on the temple grounds. She told the Thais that in her past life she had been a Hmong and asked them to find “her people who dressed in black clothing” to come live with her because she missed them.
One of the first Hmong the Thais found to visit Yaai is now said to be in his 90s and living in northern Thailand.
Before Yaai died, she turned over the role of looking after the Hmong to Panchan. She told the abbot that many of her Hmong people eventually would make their way to the temple. She left her handprint on his leg and said their protection was in his hands.
Yaai also requested she not be cremated according to Thai tradition, but put to rest in a coffin. She said if the area where her body rested didn’t turn to stone within six years, her remains could be cremated.
After six years, the area was unchanged, and preparations were made to cremate Yaai’s body. But two months later, the area miraculously turned to stone, including half the trunk of a nearby tree.
Many Hmong believe that the stones are good luck, and much has been chipped away by people eager to keep a piece.
In the cave where Yaai lived, one of the colorful pleated skirts also turned to stone. It rests at the end of a tunnel inside the cave.
Today, Chang said, the location is a popular spot for tourists, particularly the Hmong, who go there to pay homage to their “Mother” and “Father.”
Their photos hang in the homes or dangle from the necks of almost every Hmong at Wat Tham Krabok and in America.
“They loved the Hmong when no one else did,” Chang said. “That’s why the Hmong love them.”
– Keith Uhlig contributed to this story.
