This morning during breakfast NixiRay was looking at her arms and said “I’m tanner than I was yesterday. Yesterday I was a ghost, today I’m a…” She paused, thinking. Littlest chimes in “Zebra!” We all laughed about that. Then Littlest adds “Tomorrow if you’re tanner you might be a giraffe. Or a goat.” Ha!
I keep a file on my phone for the funny things the kids say…. Highly recommend it!! We look back at all the silly things sometimes and have a good laugh as we remember.
Check out how overloaded that pickup is– we saw dozens of them and wondered how they don’t tip over going around the tight curves of the mountain roads.
We took off from the hotel as early as we could and drove 3 hours to Chiang Rai. About 2 hours in to the drive NixiRay spotted a giant golden statue on top of a building. We had to pull off and see it. It was a shrine to a favorite monk from the area, and we were able to go up on top. Fun stop. Also, tropical flowers are amazing!
When we finally arrived at the White Temple in Chiang Rai Spud said “We are free from our cage of teleportation!” See what I mean about needing a file for all of these? Kids are hilarious!!
The White Temple, Wat Rong Khun, was built in 1997 by an artist. It was a bright sunny day for us and the Temple is bright white with mirrored mosiac tiles outlining all of the swirls, flowers, and statues that cover the outside. Not a great day to forget my sunglasses. Haha.
There is a lot to see on the temple block– a crazy fountain that looks like natural rock but has weird statues, faces, etc all over it… Including the teenage mutant ninja turtles, an alien, a gorilla head, a dragon turtle… Really random! We did not go into the art museum underneath/behind the fountain ($50 Baht per person and the poster advertizing it looked like creepy catacombs with skulls, demons and monsters. Not something we were interested in showing the little kids.)
There is also a golden temple structure that is actually a museum of some Buddhist artifacts and shows the building of the White Temple. This golden structure is surrounded by a moat and there’s a bridge across. There’s a fish food buying station right there. The kids had a lot of fun throwing food to the Koi and other fish (couldn’t tell if they were a kind of catfish or perch maybe? They were big!)
There is also a golden building that looks like it should be a temple but it’s actually the fanciest bathroom (and free!) in all of Thailand I think.
As we were waiting for some of the family to come out the funniest thing happened– Miss A and Littlest were sitting on a bench and a Chinese lady came up to A and sat beside her and posed with her for a picture. I moved out of the way a little and another Chinese lady from the group spotted L and came and sat by her and put her arm around her for a picture. Then the ladies smiled at the kids and kindof bowed, then left. A and L were a little shocked like “what in the world just happened?!” As I was laughing I told them that they are blond haired blue eyed American celebrities! I only wish I had gotten my phone out soon enough to take a picture myself and had a video of the whole thing.
The entrance fee for the White Temple Chapel is $100 Baht per person – Littlest girl was free, except that when we went to go through the gate the attendent stopped us because L was wearing shorts above the knee…. We had to go visit a shop nearby and rent a tied-on skirt ($120 Baht with $100 returned when we took it back after). The rest of us were wearing shorts too… But I guess hers were just an inch or two too short for the dress code.
This is a busy place with lots of tour busses dropping of loads of people, so we waited in line to go across the bridge (with hands reaching up from the depths and skulls everywhere… Creepy) and passed the sentinel statues that keep out the evil, and went into the Chapel.
Surprisingly, this chapel was one of the least ornate that we’ve seen. Considering the outside is such an ornate spectacle, the inside was quite plain (no photos allowed, but it was just a white Buddha statue and some murals of stories painted on the mostly red walls).
After we got pushed through the main part of the Temple with the crowds we were able to wander around the outside and enjoy the architecture and decor a bit more. Superman summed it up well – it was pretty on the outside and hollow on the inside. Absolutely did not feel the spirit there – not that it’s evil, but just so…. Empty.
We got lunch at the food court nearby. We give it 1 star but only because the fruit smoothies were good and they had kiwi and blueberry. The rest of the food was disgusting. We would recommend going into Chiang Rai to find better food. We did get ice cream too – lemon surprised NixiRay because it was green (lime) and I tried a shake with “Sticky cocoa” which ended up being vanilla ice cream with a ridiculous amount of fudge sauce on top. Quite yummy.
Just a random iron man sitting on a bench….
Next up was a drive-by of the Chiang Rai Golden Clock Tower. It’s in the middle of a roundabout intersection in a crummy part of town. But sure enough, there’s a big gold clock tower. We drove all the way around the round about just for fun.
Next quick stop was at a temple with an Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew Chiang Rai). I read online that the real one is now in a museum in Bangkok, but the replica one looked really cool. The most unique thing about this Temple was that parts of the walls were covered in translucent green tiles that were backlit so the whole place glowed green.
This temple also has a huge collection of orchids in pots all over the grounds. They are all in full bloom and are gorgeous! We walked around looking at all the different varieties and colors.
Next we drove to the Blue Temple, created by the student of the White Temple artist. This one is currently being repainted. It has huge statue guards at the entrance gates and the blue and gold exterior is striking.
The most fun part is that we were able to video call with our South African missionary and show him everything as we walked around. He thought it looked pretty crazy!
Later today he was able to call again to tell us about his week and he showed us a Zulu dance that all of the GoGo’s are impressed by (hilarious!). So glad we could talk to both of our missionaries even though our time zones are totally off (usually we’re 9 hours behind B, now we’re 5 hours ahead. And at home we’re 4 hours behind C and now we’re 10 hours ahead.)
Next on our itinerary for the day was to go to the Khun Korn waterfall but when I put it in the GPS we decided we didn’t have time to get there and hike it before it closed. So, change of plans, we found a hot springs close by and drove there. Superman said it well – “If half of Thailand wasn’t in there it would probably be okay.” As it was, it looked pretty sketchy and filthy and we decided against it. On to plan C, the Red Temple.
This Temple area was super surprising– there was a 26 story tall statue of a woman, the Red Temple, and a towering temple that looks like an upside down ice cream cone all next to each other.
We started with the huge staircase (100 stairs) leading to the woman statue. We never did find out who she represented because there were no signs… But inside the building below her there was an elevator. For $40 Baht each we could go up inside the head of the statue.
The inside of the head was ornately decorated with white sculptures all over the place. The eyes and dot in the middle of the forehead were open to the outside air and provided a cool aerial view of the whole area.
The Temple next to it was very ornate. The inside was one of the prettiest we’ve seen. White Buddha statues surrounded by flowers and white columns, walls, and even the ceiling covered in carvings of flowers and swirls.
Random dinosaur sheep and pumpkin statues to climb on… Because, why not?
The spiral building had staircases inside that allowed us to climb 9 stories to the very top. The staircases got progressively smaller until the last one was a spiral going up through a 3 foot hole to the top floor. There were windows on all sides and a perfect view of the sunset going down over the surrounding hills.
We started the 3 hour drive back to our hotel in Chiang Mai thinking we’d stop in about an hour to find dinner. Two hours later we finally stopped at a 7-11 that was open… But nothing looked appetizing (microwaved burgers or pizza just didn’t sound great). So we went on until we stopped for gas and in the parking lot was a KFC.
We went in to order and were told they only had chicken for 1 more meal and were about to close… Of course. So, we ordered the one meal and split it 6 ways. It would have been okay except that half of the chicken was spicy (like burn your face spicy) and the other half was somewhat spicy. Haha, that’s what we get for eating KFC in Thailand.
Zonked after a long day!
