General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Laplae the Hidden Town (เมืองลับแล)

Laplae the Hidden Town (เมืองลับแล) is a 2024 Thai period fantasy drama broadcast on Workpoint 23, adapted from the local legend of Laplae district in Uttaradit province, a hidden town in the mist inhabited only by women.¹ The series ran for 20 episodes, first airing on 31 August 2024, and was directed by Nat Chatchai Kasemnust (แน็ต ชาติชาย เกษนัส), whose earlier work includes Man Sueang.¹ It combines romance, drama, thriller, and fantasy elements with a historical setting.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Thai period drama, 20 episodes, Workpoint 23, Saturdays and Sundays¹^•²
First aired	31 August 2024¹
Director	Nat Chatchai Kasemnust (แน็ต ชาติชาย เกษนัส)¹
Lead cast	เพียงฟ้า ยากานิกิ (ซอมพอ), มะลิมาริสา ฮิวส์ (กาหลา), ภัทร์ไพบูลย์ โอภาสสุวรรณ (แชน), ศดานนท์ ดุรงคเวโรจน์ (มิน), ปิยธิดา มิตรธีรโรจน์ (แม่เมืองบัว), ภัทรวรินทร์ ทิมกุล (แม่คุ้มอังกาบ)³
Source legend	The local legend of Laplae district, Uttaradit: a mist-shrouded town of only women where turmeric becomes gold outside the walls²
Central rule	Girls at 18 are selected as demon hunters (นักล่าผู้มาร) who leave the town to conceive and return to bear daughters; a son means the family falls to the laborer class⁴
Streaming	Available on Netflix after broadcast¹

Spoilers

Premise and setting

The drama builds its world from the legend as it is told in the district itself: a mysterious town in the mist in a mountain valley, a town of only women and of good people, which no one has ever proved to exist. Any man who wanders in will not come back out. Turmeric is a miraculous plant used as medicine inside the town, but once carried outside it turns to gold.² To keep the population going, the town holds a sacred rite selecting 18-year-old women to go out, conceive with men, and return to bear daughters who will continue the lineage.²

The demon-hunting rite. Under the town's custom, every girl who has begun menstruating receives training in various fields of knowledge before being selected at 18 for the honored duty outside the town: the demon hunt (พิธีล่าผู้มาร), meaning going out to conceive with a man. A woman who bears a son must fall into the laborer class, so the stakes of each birth are explicit.⁴ The selection is run as a competition: candidates train hard for the chance to raise their family's status and become the next town mother (แม่เมือง), and those eliminated are demoted to the laborer class.⁵ A 2024 academic conference paper on the series describes the selection as the mechanism by which chosen women leave the town to reproduce and increase the female population.⁶

Plot and characters

The story follows Sompho (ซอมพอ), played by เพียงฟ้า ยากานิกิ, daughter of Mae Mueang Bua (แม่เมืองบัว), the ruler of Laplae played by ปิยธิดา มิตรธีรโรจน์. Sompho travels with her close friend Kala (กาหลา), played by มะลิมาริสา ฮิวส์, daughter of Mae Khum Angkab (แม่คุ้มอังกาบ), the town's commander-in-chief, played by ภัทรวรินทร์ ทิมกุล, after both are selected for the demon-hunting rite.³ Kala's secret, which Sompho does not know, is that she has loved Sompho for a long time as more than a friend.³

Outside the town the two women meet men whose storylines tie Laplae to the outside world of the period. Chan (แชน), played by ภัทร์ไพบูลย์ โอภาสสุวรรณ, is a railway-route surveyor and the son of Luang Mit Phairi (หลวงมิตรไพรี), a Siamese commander played by นภัสกร มิตรธีรโรจน์ who is marching to suppress the Ngiao rebellion and has some past history with Laplae.³ Chan appears in Sompho's dreams before they ever meet, and he is planning a railway through the hidden town even though he does not believe it exists.⁵ Min (มิน), played by ศดานนท์ ดุรงคเวโรจน์, is a young Ngiao man who works as a messenger between the Siamese army and the Ngiao; he finds the golden turmeric that Sompho drops and hopes to steal more of it to sell for weapons for the rebels fighting Siam.³

The six demon hunters leave the town using the golden turmeric as the key for passing in and out.⁵ Inside Laplae, meanwhile, Mae Khum Angkab learns Mae Mueang Bua's secret: that the virtue and morality used to govern the town are instruments for maintaining and passing on her own power, and she begins plotting a rebellion.³ The forbidden love that develops between the hunters and the men they meet during the mission is, under the town's rules, a serious violation, and it coincides with an internal power struggle of a kind never seen before in the town.⁷

Themes and social reading

The series uses its fantasy frame to dramatize social structure. A review notes that the town has an explicit rule system, particularly concerning the status of women and men and of daughters versus sons, which directly determines each person's class; power is transmitted through rules and family lines, and every decision carries a price.⁸ The same reading identifies three groups that organize the narrative: the power holders who make the rules, the younger generation who begin questioning the system, and the outsiders, the "demons" (men), whose arrival destabilizes the town's balance.⁸

Earlier Thai scholarship on the source legend reads it through gender hierarchy: the custom assigns women the role of a labor class with no right to determine their own life path, while men hold the duty of protecting the village, a structure the analysis treats as present in every society, rural or urban.⁹ The 2024 conference paper on the drama analyzes how the town mother uses strict rules and symbols, including fear, to control society and to stigmatize those who fall short of the standards.⁶

The legend and the real Laplae

The legend on which the drama draws is the local legend (ตำนานเมืองลับแล) of the people of Laplae district, Uttaradit province. In one version recorded in the Thailand Cultural Encyclopedia, a young man from the south of the town becomes lost while cutting wood, meets a woman in the forest, and marries her in Laplae under an agreement that neither will ever lie under any circumstances; breaking the promise means separation.¹⁰ An analysis of the Lanna ghost story tradition explains that the tale ties honesty to living together and reads the expulsion of the man from the town, even though he lied only to comfort his child, as a deliberately harsh warning meant to make the moral lesson memorable.¹¹ The provincial tourism office records that the widow story was transmitted orally and is the origin of the community slogan "Laplae, the zone where lying is forbidden" (เมืองลับแล เขตห้ามพูดโกหก); the town gate and statues show that the community tells the legend alongside real places, but the slogan is a moral precept from the story, not a law or evidence that supernatural events occurred.¹¹

The real district has a documented history. Archaeological evidence indicates that Laplae was a large and prosperous community from before the Sukhothai period, with a stone inscription found at Wat Chedi Kiri Wihan (originally named Wat Pa Kae) and other ancient sites confirming its age.¹² A historical study describes Laplae as a mixed community influenced culturally by the larger neighboring states of Sukhothai, Lan Na (Phrae-Nan), and Lan Xang, whose people call themselves "Yuan Laplae" (ไท-ยวนแห่งเมืองลับแล).¹³ In King Chulalongkorn's reform of administration into monthon, Laplae was reduced in status to a district (amphoe) under Monthon Phitsanulok, and Phra Si Phanmat became its first district officer.¹⁴

Heritage tourism. The legend is now part of the district's cultural identity and economy. Local authorities have landscaped the area around the Laplae town gate, built a Laplae town museum in two old houses displaying the implements and way of life of earlier residents, and opened a Saturday walking street selling local products; the site is about 4 kilometers from Uttaradit town and is positioned for cultural tourism and MICE business.¹⁴ A tourism-identity study frames the district as a secondary destination built on the creative economy and the business of nostalgia.¹³ Household industry also carries the town's name outward: the crisp rice cracker khao khep (ข้าวแคบ) has been made in nearly every household in Sri Phanmat subdistrict and Fai Luang subdistrict for generations, thought to date back more than 100 years.¹⁵

Adaptations of the legend

Laplae the Hidden Town is not the first television treatment of the legend. The Channel 8 series Phreng Laplae (เพรงลับแล), a mystery fantasy drama, told the story of the town and the ghost of a widow searching for her vanished lover, leading to strange deaths in which men in a village died in their sleep, with the town of Laplae left inhabited only by women after a curse.¹⁶ The 2024 Workpoint version differs by centering the town's own institutions, the selection rite, the class system, and the internal power struggle, rather than the ghost's revenge plot.³^•¹⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › Turkish, Middle Eastern, and African serials › Thai serial dramas (lakorn)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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