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Published: September 13th 2012
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The Clock Tower
Designed by the same artist who did the White Temple After the easiest and quickest border crossing yet getting back into Thailand, we took a two hour bus from Chiang Chong to Chiang Rai (the bus cost 65bht each and they leave every 30mins). When we arrived in Chiang Rai we took a tuk-tuk from the station because we had pre-booked a room at the Baan Rub Aroon Guesthouse towards the quieter end of town. We were both more than pleased with our choice, the house is an old colonial style building which is surrounded by beautiful relaxing gardens. The lovely owner Nong was there to greet us with a big smile and showed us to our nice room and around her lovely house.
After giving us a map of the area and some great recommendations of things to do and places to eat, Nong said that we should go see Wat Rong Khun (The White Temple) so we quickly headed off and jumped into a tuk-tuk for the twenty minute journey out of town.
Wat Rong Khun is different to all the other temples we have seen in SE Asia as it is a modern newly built temple and also because it is totally white in colour. It
is a contemporary Buddhist and Hindu temple and was built in 1997 and is designed by a famous Thai artist called Chalerermchai Kositpipat. When you arrive the sight of the temple really does take your breath away as it is blindingly white and looks like it had just ‘beamed up’ straight out of Narnia or something . The temple is surrounded by a pond in which it is reflected in the water just adding to the amazing sight. After walking past some freaky heads hanging from trees with plants for beards, we were pleasantly surprised that it was free to enter, so spent the next hour exploring this strange eerie looking gothic place. Just before you cross the bridge which is guarded by two scary looking Neptune characters there are loads of hands which are coming out of the ground, one hand had just one fingernail painted red which was a bit strange. I think it supposed to represent the cycle of rebirth with the pits of hell below. I was just starting to think this artist had some serious issues to address, when Jane said ”Oooh this is my new favourite artist”. Kind of figures. When you enter the
temple it is just as strange inside. There is a huge mural on the wall which I think is supposed to represent some sort of apocalyptic end to the world, with a large serpent coming down from some sort of angel of death, explosions, people dying and the even the planes flying towards the twin towers. There are also many references to modern day popular culture on there, with figures such as Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Neo from the Matrix, Angry Birds and Michael Jackson dotted around. We stood there for what seemed like ages analysing it and we probably could have stayed longer, you just can’t take your eyes of it. The temple is incomplete and Chalerermchai Kositpipat is training artists to continue its progress after his death.
After exiting the temple we took a tour around Chalerermchai Kositpipat gallery which is situated just next door. Inside there were lots more strange but brilliant pieces of artwork, our favourite was a painting of George Bush being fired into space on a rocket, smiling and saying ‘bye bye’. Another painting showed George Bush and Bin Laden holding hands, sat on a rocket which had a peace sign on the side.
His artwork is very clever, controversial and definitely makes you think.
There isn’t really too much more to say about Chiang Rai, that evening we went for a walk to the night bazaar, but compared to the markets in Laos it was pretty poor. We got some food and then on the walk back got our photo taken next to some big gold clock in the middle of a roundabout. The next day we did a walk around the city and saw some pretty mediocre temples and loads of shops selling lawn mowers and we both decided it was time to move on to Chiang Mai. Guess what, the journey to Chiang Mai wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be as unbeknown to us we had decided to move cities on one of the busiest day of the year. We had read in the terrible lonely planet (which would be better used as toilet roll) that we didn’t have to book tickets. After chatting to some very friendly monks on the songthaew bus to the main bus station we were told by the ticket lady that all the bus tickets for Chiang Mai were sold out for
that day, but she did say we could take a four hour bus to Lampang and then get a connecting bus to Chiang Mai, another two hours. This wasn’t ideal but it seemed a whole load better than walking round lawn mower shops for the rest of the day. We got the last two seats on the bus and we were lucky we did because you just can’t believe how many people they crammed on the tin can. There were probably over one hundred people crammed into a fifty seater coach and I smiled as some unlucky folks had to stand for the full journey to Lampang. Karma really does works quickly in this country; after getting wet through walking in the torrential rain to the 7/11 to get us some food, I left Jane to queue to get the bus tickets for the connecting journey. When I returned drenched through I was told that there were no seats left and we would have to stand, all the way to Chiang Mai. Surprising though, it wasn’t actually that bad, but we wouldn’t want to do it again!
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