The carved wooden doors and window shutters on the ground floor of Phra Mahathat Kaen Nakhon stupa at Wat Nong Wang tell the Lao-Isan folktale, Four Jampa Trees.

I’ve yet to translate the story to English, but have posted this page so the QR code on the sign at the temple does not send visitors to a broken link. In the meantime, you can read a synopsis of the Champa Si Ton story from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University.

About the namesake trees, in the present day jampa is the Lao name for frangipani trees; very common in both Thailand and Laos (and the national flower of the latter), but an introduced species from the Americas. Most likely the tree of the story, which was written hundreds of years ago, was actually the champak (Magnolia champaca), a species native to southern Asia which also has big, beautiful flowers and is called jampa in both the Thai and Isan language.