Tag 337 - Wat Rong Khun (the White Temple)

Hello dear friends ☺️

Last night was a bit restless for us, somehow we kept waking up. But we stayed in bed until 10 o'clock and started the day refreshed ☺️

We got ready and checked out at 11:30 a.m.

After that, we went back to Singha Park because as mentioned yesterday, we wanted to go for a ride on the Surrons today. But when we arrived there, the rental was closed (lunch break until 1 p.m.). We asked an employee who happened to be there if we were even allowed to ride freely. When he said no, we decided to skip the ride because we would have had to wait for about 45 minutes and ride in a row... That's not really our thing... After a quick discussion, we continued to the White Temple.

There are countless temples here, but the White Temple is supposedly one of the most beautiful in Thailand, which is why we chose it. It is also considered a landmark of Chiang Rai.

It was very close by and we reached our destination after a ten-minute drive.

The temple was incredibly beautiful! Everything was completely white and decorated with silver details. Since we are a bit culturally insensitive, here is a brief summary from another backpacker, who in our opinion described the principle of the temple really well:

It is almost not a temple anymore, but rather a work of art. The Wat Rong Khun is designed in such a way that you go from hell to heaven. If you go back a bit for a few photos, like I did, you will be kindly reminded by the - let me call him that – guardian. He sits in a small house outside the temple and you often hear announcements on the loudspeaker like: "We don't want to go back to hell, please move on to heaven." The temple is entirely white and silver, except for its paintings inside. But they are also really cool. Unfortunately, no photos are allowed. But if you look towards the door inside, you can see a huge skull above it. The whole wall is decorated with drawings and pictures that you would never expect in a temple. There are Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Michael Jackson, Darth Vader, Angry Birds, the burning World Trade Center and many more. Truly impressive and really well drawn! (Source: https://homeiswhereyourbagis.com/chiang-rai-und-der-weisse-tempel/)

Like this travel blogger, we were also mighty impressed by this architectural masterpiece! We strolled through the temple complex in awe and somehow there was an atmosphere of reverence despite the many visitors. Definitely worth a visit when you are in northern Thailand!

After the visit, we briefly considered stopping by the Black House, because supposedly it is the opposite of the White Temple and also worth a look. But it was another 30 minutes in the opposite direction, so we decided against it and drove back towards Chiang Mai.

On the way back, we made a short food and photo stop at a hot spring. There was also an old, dilapidated temple that had caught my interest on the way there. After taking photos, we continued towards Chiang Mai, but we wanted to make one more stop along the way so we wouldn't arrive at the hotel too early.

We found another national park and in it, a small reservoir. We made ourselves comfortable there until the sun went down and the mosquitoes threatened to devour us 😅.

After that, we finally drove to the hotel, ordered some food, booked a hotel for the upcoming nights (tomorrow we are heading to Koh Chang 😁🌴), and ended the evening on the terrace ☺️

The pictures will follow tomorrow 😉

Until then!