Giveaways
MY TOUR around Chiang Mai didn’t include all the famous temples. One I didn’t get to see was Wat Sri Suphan, with its famous metallic ubosot or ordination hall, built between 2004 and 2016 from a mixture of aluminium, silver and nickel by local silversmiths. I imagine that if you go there on a sunny day, it will look especially spectacular.
Another famous temple I did not get to see is Wat Phra Singh, guarded by two lions (singh) though apparently the ‘singh’ refers to qualities of the Buddha.
There are about 300 temples in Chiang Mai, so this just scratches the surface, and I would urge anyone to read up further before visiting!
From Chiang Mai and its overlooking mountain of Doi Suthep, I joined travelling companions Esther and Minako to head further westward on a guided tour to the Hmong Village on Doi Pui.
The Hmong are an indigenous people found over much of Southeast Asia and Southwestern China, numbering four to five million in total. Like the Kurds in Western Asia, the Hmong have no country of their own despite being reasonably numerous, and generally live in the hilly parts of the various countries across which they are scattered, having presumably lost the lowlands many centuries ago to more numerous and powerful populations of rice farmers such as the Thai, the Han Chinese, the Vietnamese, and so on.
In some of the Hmong tribes, the women wear neck rings that push down their collarbones and elongate the neck. This is supposed to make them more beautiful and also to protect against tiger bites, though that may well be a bit of a myth. Getting bitten by a tiger is certainly not the sort of thing that happens very often these days, at any rate.
There were lots of craft stalls in the village.
Along with Esther and Minako, I caught up with a wedding party as well.
Here is a view of a sunset over the Hmong Village from higher up on Doi Pui.
Next, I went on another guided tour to Chiang Rai, the old capital of Lan Na, which is nearly as far north as you can go in Thailand. Sadly, Chiang Rai was flooded just before I got there, and six people were killed.
Chiang Rai is famous for its coloured temples: the Red Temple, the Black Temple, the Blue Temple, and the White Temple.
Confusingly, another temple with a huge pagoda next to a really immense Buddha, Wat Huay Pla Kang, is also called the Red Temple.
The White Temple, more formally known as Wat Rong Khun, is one that I made sure to visit, along with Wat Huay Pla Kang.
Despite its informal name, the White Temple also includes a large golden building called the Ganesha Exhibition Hall. The complex gets the name White Temple from exuberant white structures designed and built, along with the golden restroom facility, by the modern Thai artist Chalermchai Kositpipat, who completed most or all of the white temple buildings by 1997.
As with the silver temple in Chiang Mai, Wat Rong Khun would probably be especially stunning on a fine day, as in this image.
The next photo shows the layout of the complex, with an image of the artist at the very bottom right of the panel.
Here are some more photos from my visit.
Here is a closer view of the main part of the White Temple, with a good view of its bridge and reflecting pond.
The next photo shows an amiable-looking demon sitting on a park bench, while over to the left is what appears to be another demon, the Demon Drink, with a bottle of whisky sitting on its skull-like head and surrounded by what seem to be flames (know the feeling).
Here is a tree with heads dangling from it. Not sure what the religious significance of this is. Perhaps it is the sort of thing that was a bit more for real in the old days.
There was a golden belfry.
And a golden fountain.
And some winged beasts with no faces: very strange.
There was a cave of art as well.
And here is the Ganesha Exhibition Hall. Buddhism in Thailand has many Indian or Hindu elements, including the elephant god Ganesha, which you see on the walls of businesses, just as in Hindu culture. There are also many folk elements as well.
There are some spectacular golden public toilets at Wat Rong Khun. In fact, this is another of the things it is famous for.
These structures look silvery, but what the artist did was to place bits of mirrored glass into the white plaster, to create a pearly look.
Here are my brief video impressions of Wat Rong Khun:
After that, we hit the road and got a view of a tea plantation. I always find tea plantations a very restful sight (so long as I don’t have the tea-picking to do, perhaps?)
And from there to Wat Huay Pla Kang, which is in more of a Chinese style, perhaps because this far north, the countryside is getting close to China (though there is a bit of Laos in the way).
The Wat Huay Pla Kang complex includes a giant white figure of the Chinese Buddhist goddess of mercy, Guan Yin, who hears the world’s lamentations. A Westerner instantly thinks of the Virgin Mary as a parallel, though in some Buddhist traditions Guan Yin, who may also go by a Sanskrit name, is not necessarily female. The statue is so gigantic that the people on the plaza and the path at the bottom appear as just little dots. You can go inside the giant goddess and look out through viewports at the top, over the town.
Here is some of the artwork inside the giant goddess. Guan Yin is often depicted as having a huge number of arms, nominally one thousand, and sometimes with eleven heads as well. Again, this kind of image is something that perhaps betrays a Hindu influence as well.
The complex gets the name Red Temple because of the big red pagoda next to Guan Yin.
Here’s a selfie next to Guan Yin in the pagoda.
The next photo almost seems like duelling Nagas, the ones at the foot of the pagoda and the ones at the foot of the stairs leading to a small white temple between the Buddha and the pagoda.
I’ve made a video of my experiences climbing the pagoda, followed by a relaxing overview of the tea plantation.
Oh, and I enjoyed the street food, as always!
On returning to Chiang Mai, to catch a bus to my next destination, I managed to get a photo of the Three Kings monument in front of the old town hall. It is dedicated to the three northern Thai, or Lao, kings who founded Chiang Mai.
Next: A report on time spent at an orphanage in Kannachaburi.
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