Thailand – Day 5

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22 March 2018

And once again we had to forget about our sundresses and put on our elephant harem pants purchased in Bangkok, as pretty much the whole of today is dedicated to temples in Chiang Rai and its environs.

In general, there are lots and lots of temples in Thailand, people seem much more religious than, for example, in Vietnam or China, and it’s much more common to see monks everywhere. That’s quite understandable – the country hasn’t been colonised recently, it has no communist past or present, so obviously, religion hasn’t been historically oppressed. And by the way, Buddhism here seems to contain elements of Hinduism.

The first temple we went to was Wat Phra Singh, founded in the 14th century. The name of this temple comes from the golden Buddha image, almost as famous (and as ‘well-traveled’) as the Emerald Buddha. Our guide Dino said that the temple’s architecture is in Burmese style.

What was specifically remarkable about this temple is the large number of stray dogs that are fed here, apparently with rice, given their state of utter apathy; and sal trees, sacred to Buddhists, with large and very fragrant flowers.

From here we headed to another temple – Wat Phra Keo, or the temple of the Emerald Buddha. Yes, yes, it has the same name as the one we saw in Bangkok. The temple is very old and was originally called something else, but in the 15th century, it was here, among the wreckage of a stupa split by a thunderbolt, that the Emerald Buddha statue, believed to be of divine origin, was found. Since the 18th century and up to this day, the statue is in Bangkok, just where we saw it, but before that it traveled a lot around the territories of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. Dino talked about the statue’s displacements in the most thorough details – who and when took/stole it, who robbed whom etc. – but we didn’t even try to memorise all this, especially since he wasn’t the most interesting narrator ever…

The Chiang Rai temple currently has a jade replica of the Emerald Buddha (in fact, as you may remember, the original one is also made of jade) but at least, unlike in Bangkok, you can photograph it.

Right here, on the territory of the temple, we noticed a pond with turtles and spent quite a while watching one particular small, but proud turtle trying to crawl towards the fence, walking on the heads of its fellow turtles.

The third temple we saw was really the best – it was the White temple, very beautiful and unusual. It’s quite new, having been built in 1997, and in fact I would rather call it a modern art exhibit in the style of a Buddhist Temple.

The white colour represents spiritual purity.

To get into the temple itself, one has to walk along a bridge past the “hands of sinners” sticking out of the earth – very symbolic.

Right next to the temple there’s a museum containing paintings by Chalermchai Kositpipat – the artist who built this temple with his own money. The paintings are quite interesting, many depict paradise with different buildings in the same style as the White Temple, or mythological animals.

The gorgeous gilded building on the territory of the temple is nothing more than the ‘happy room’ (or rather a whole happy palace!), that is, a toilet.

Fortunately for us, the thickest crowds of tourists started arriving just as we were leaving – most probably from Chiang Mai – so we were really lucky to walk around and take pictures without them.

The White Temple was our last stop before we drove off to Chiang Mai – we had already checked out from our Chiang Rai hotel this morning and loaded our suitcases in the car. We stopped on our way for lunch, again in a cheap roadside cafe, with a hot spring next to it. In one fenced well, the water was boiling and bubbling up, another one was used for cooking eggs, and there was also a bigger section of the spring which was cool enough to put one’s legs into it, which is supposedly very good for health. Some people managed to sit knee-deep in the water, but I was barely able to dip my feet for a couple of seconds, as the water was very hot – around 50 degrees Celsius – the exact opposite situation of yesterday’s pool visit in Chiang Rai!

We arrived at our hotel in Chiang Mai at about 3pm. The hotel is located next to the night market, so there are lots of market stalls, massage parlours and bars around.

The hotel has two excellent swimming pools, and this time we had better luck and managed to take a dip. And we knew right away that we’d be more lucky – unlike in Chiang Rai, the poolside area was full of people.

Our tour programme for the evening included a trip to the street food market and dinner right there. We tried pork satay (i.e. pork skewers) with peanut sauce, snapper fish in salt and some pork dish with rice. It was quite tasty, although not necessarily much cheaper than in a restaurant.

On the way back to the hotel our guide Dino took a longer route so that we could walk around the Old Town, which we didn’t enjoy much – there was little to see in the dark, plus we wanted to rest a bit and enjoy some guide-less time.

Once we said goodbye to him, we went for a drink at one of the bars near the hotel, but left very quickly – the place seemed a bit dodgy, with a few foreign men and a lot of half-naked local women (if they were all women, of course), rushing with open arms towards every white man in sight trying to lure him into the bar. It seems that all the bars around are like that, and many are even completely empty, except for the stacks of women waiting at the entrance.