After exploring Chiang Saen basically as a couple of day trips from Chiang Rai, Now it’s time to explore Chiang Rai itself. I was the most worried about dealing with floods in Chiang Saen, but it turns out that Chiang Rai got flooded much worse. The water has receded and the city is mostly cleaned up, but the streets are very dusty and dirty with now dried mud and there are piles of mud on the sides of some streets that was just sort of pushed out of the way. Luckily, my five nights here went fine, but they definitely had a rough time a little over a week ago.

I started with a quick stop at Chiang Rai’s Wat Phra Singh, not to be confused with the temple in Chiang Mai of the same name. This temple is named after its exact copy of the “Lion” Buddha from Chiang Mai’s temple. But the two Buddha’s I saw are not alike, so I must be missing something. In any case, it’s a really nice temple.

Wat Phra Kaew was originally named Wat Pa Yia, which means Bamboo Forest Temple. It’s a really pretty place. In the 15th century it was changed to Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

The Emerald Buddha is thought to have been made in India a couple of thousand years ago, but no one really knows. The legend goes that in 1434, lightening struck and broke the chedi behind Wat Pa Yia revealing a plaster Buddha. It was placed in the Abbots quarters until he noticed the plaster flaking off revealing this green emerald Buddha. Since then it’s been moved to Lampang, Chiang Mai, Laos, many others, and now resides at the royal palace in Bangkok. This thing is really well traveled. The copy here in Chiang Rai, seen below, I’m told is made of jade.

Just a couple of blocks away is Wat Doi Ngam Mueang. It wasn’t really on my radar, but the nice woman at the restaurant told me it’s where the ashes of King Mangrai, the famous Lanna king and founder of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, are kept. So I went to take a peek.

The next day I hopped in the car to visit some sites further out of the city and you’ll be happy to know that I found all the other tourists in Thailand. This next place just a short distance south, was an absolute zoo! I’m not sure where all the people came from because they’re certainly not staying in Chiang Rai, but here they all were at Wat Rong Khun, also known as the white temple.

This place is not historic at all. It was built in 1997 by a Thai artist turned architect for what purpose exactly, I don’t know. It seems to just be a tourist playground, but it is beautiful and striking. You enter the temple by crossing the bridge of desire over the reaching hands of the people trapped by their desires and scenes of some really disturbing stuff, Buddhist hell.

If you make it over the bridge leaving your desires behind you enter the temple and come out the other side where nirvana awaits, Buddhist heaven.

After enjoying the incredibly beautiful temple, overcoming your desires and reaching nirvana, you can get some food and shop at one of the many many souvenir shops nearby. It’s a very spiritually moving experience.

In the opposite direction, a bit north of Chiang Rai I found the Baan Dam Museum. A Thai artist named Thawan Duchanee, built about forty different structures on the property out of teak wood and stained them all black. It sounds weird, but it was a really beautiful place.

The main structure houses an extensive collection of his artwork, Mostly paintings.

The other structures are all built like temples and traditional Lanna architecture. They were really cool! This guy also has a huge, I mean tremendous, collection of animal skins, skulls, and bones. Every building is filled with furniture made from dead animal parts. Most of the pieces are from water buffalo skulls and antlers, but he also had about a million alligator hides, and even a full elephant skeleton.

I imagine he must have been a super interesting guy. I especially liked that he seemed to paint a lot of tigers. My favorite!

Just down the street from my hotel is Chiang Rai’s Night Bazaar. It wasn’t really a happening place this night, but on the weekends it’s pretty crowded and bustling. Down the street and to the left is a stage where there are musical and dance performances every night.

Also just down the street from the Night Bazaar is the Clock Tower. I’m not sure what the story is with this thing, but it’s basically the centerpiece of the city and it’s really pretty, especially at night.

The highlight of my time in Chiang Rai came on the last day at the Oub Kham Museum. This place was really awesome!

A local guy named Julasak Suriyachai was starting to get worried that so much of the Lanna history was ending up in museums in other countries, primarily in Europe. So he started traveling all over the ancient Lanna kingdom buying and snatching up everything he could find, just to keep it in the region. The Lanna kingdom spans from Myanmar, through northern Thailand, Laos, north Vietnam, and much of southern China.

In his travels he acquired an astonishing array of statuary, ancient clothing, pottery, gold and silver artifacts, ancient manuscripts (seen above), every dilapidated piece of every extinct temple he could find… everything!!! He even found several items from the ancient royalty, including these crowns seen below.

My favorites were the thrones. There was no mention of exactly which kings these belonged to, but they are pretty incredible finds.

I see all these different types of pots and containers at every temple I visit and I always just assumed they were metal or perhaps wood, but it turns out they’re all made from bamboo. Beautiful!

There was also an ancient raincoat. I’d be willing to bet that it works better than a modern one.

Finally, after overdosing at Oub Kham Museum, I stopped at the Mae Fah Luang Art and Cultural Park. They had a fair amount of Lanna artifacts too, but this place seemed to be mostly about the Lanna architecture made of teak wood.

The main building was a temple, Haw Kham, constructed from the remains of 32 Lanna houses. Inside were a bunch of artifacts and a couple of impressive ancient Buddha’s.

The old long boat below the temple was a cool find too.

There was also a more modern building with some more modern contemporary art in, but I was a little less interested in that. It was fun to walk around for a minute though.

So much for my time in Chiang Rai. The first couple of weeks of this trip has been a bit stressful when it comes to avoiding all the flooding going on. The news here looks super ominous, but luckily I’ve avoided catastrophe so far. I’m still checking the news daily and asking the locals I encounter for advice and it looks like I’m not out of the water just yet. A new storm system just moved in and some of my next few stops are preparing for more floods. Wish me luck!…