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Wat Chedi (AiKai)
In the 1980s when the Cold War still raged in the kingdom, a unit of paramilitary rangers was sent south to Nakhon Si Thammarat to crack down on the communist movement. Once there, they set up a temporary base camp inside an ancient temple.
All through their first night, the rangers were unable to sleep as they were vexed by a formless poltergeist. It pulled their arms and legs. Knocked their heads. Move their guns. By morning, their weapon racks were toppled, and they were convinced some very mischievous spirit was at play.
The next morning, locals heard about their miserable night and let them in on their secret: Their juvenile tormentor had a name, “Ai Khai,” a spirit they said had guarded the grounds for hundreds of years, since the late Ayutthaya period. They said it was occasionally spotted in the form of a boy, about 9, running naked around the temple.
The boy, Khai, was said to be a student and servant of a veteran monk who was heading north on a pilgrimage to Ayutthaya.
Passing through Nakhon Si Thammarat, the pair stopped at a monastery. The monk, with his advanced sensitivity to the metaphysical, realized the monastery would become a significant Buddhist site, so he tasked the boy with a new purpose. “You shall stay here, for the graciousness and prosperity of this place in the future, a milestone for the religion,” he told him.
Miracle and Story
There are other origin stories about the Kuman Thong-like spirit who’s been famous in the region for a long time. But those in Bangkok probably heard about Ai Khai only when he became a news sensation earlier this year when his blessings were credited with breathing life back into the pandemic-slumped economy of Nakhon Si Thammarat, which has been enjoying a boom of Ai Khai tourism.
Unlike those who travel from afar to wait in long lines in hope of getting an amulet bearing the spirit, Sukanya Yoowang said she acquired one by chance around five years ago, as if he wanted her to have it.
“Actually I didn’t use to pray to him. I have him because I suddenly found him. I’d lived here for decades. I didn’t know where it came from. It was just there on the ground, in front of our home,” the 53-year-old mackerel seller in the neighboring Surat Thani said of how she found the oval-shape amulet of Ai Khai.
“Whenever I go to the market, I call on him to help me. Everytime I ask him, I can sell out all the mackerel in no time,” she told Coconuts Bangkok. “My sister also found an amulet. Out of nowhere. It lay in front of her stall, as if he only appears to those he wants to help.”
Nipha Siridikij, another Surat Thani resident, said that while she doesn’t particularly believe in Ai Khai, she prayed and made offerings to him upon hearing about his power to grant wishes. That was around 10 years ago.
“When my kids were taking university admission tests, I asked him to help,” she said. “I asked him to help my son, and he got accepted.”
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