One Night in Chiang Rai

After leaving my friends in Pai, I decided to stop over in Chiang Rai for a night before heading into Laos. Chiang Rai on it's own is not incredibly interesting, but it's about halfway between Chiang Mai and the Lao border, so it makes for a convenient stopover.

Also, there's the White Wat, or Wat Rong Khun, which is totally wild.

I stopped by on my last morning in Thailand.

The White Wat was begun in 1997 and is the brainchild of this man:

That's a cardboard cutout, in case that isn't apparent.


He's Chalermchai Kositpipat, an artist who mixes traditional elements of Buddhist and Hindu art with contemporary images like, uh...

The wat is a work in progress. Mr. Kositpipat estimates that it will take another 50 years or so to complete, even with his large staff of artisans working hard at it:

To get to the main area of the temple visitors cross over a bridge that signifies the escape from the cycle of rebirth into the Abode of the Buddha. Underneath is the artist's representation of the human world, which to me seems overly grim:

...but then again some sources tell me it's a representation of hell, in which case it seems about right. These guys guard the way:



 to this:



I wasn't supposed to take photos inside, but I couldn't help sneaking a few. You'll see why.

Inside the temple one wall includes the traditional Buddha portraits and a wax statue of a monk. I heard a Japanese tourist ask a guard in all seriousness how long the monk sits there everyday.

On the opposite wall is this image (this is a print in an adjoining museum, which I also wasn't supposed to photograph, which is why it's covered in glare):

Looking closely into the pupils, one has George W. Bush and one has Osama Bin Laden. Walking around the museum that was a common theme; one of the paintings had the two of them straddling a rocket that was blasting into space and was entitled something like: "Love one Another". It was all very odd, to be honest.

Interwoven into that illustration are small but distinct details. Let's play spot the pop culture icons.

I don't love it. But I have to hand it to the guy who took thousands of years of traditional Buddhist art and had the hutzpah to twist it a little bit, even if it was in a strange, somewhat dirivitive direction.