Day 3: White Temple Chiang Rai

The White Temple, or more formally Wat Rong Khun วัดร่องขุ่น is a popular tourist attraction in Chiang Rai created by Chalermchai Kositpipat, a local artist who designed and constructed using his own money, and opened it to visitors in 1997.

Although I have seen pictures, they did not prepare me for the real experience. It is so dazzling and bright a lot of the photos came out with dark faces, so these photos all had to be “enhanced” to bring out the humans, which seem puny compared to the majesty of the buildings. Even the toilets are golden towers! Even though the photos don’t show it - there were a lot of visitors, it was very crowded. Luckily we found a quiet side of the temple where there were not too many people. Margaret and I went on an extended tour of the temple whilst the other ladies went shopping.

We spent so long here, by the time we left, it was already late afternoon. Patter, our tour guide, decided we will have to skip visiting the Singha Park and head straight to the Blue Temple to catch it in sunset, the best time of the day to visit it. We didn’t mind, as it turned out none of us were really that keen to spend a hot day in the park.