The temples of Chiang Rai

The temples of Chiang Rai confuse me. They are all very modern temples and they are beautiful but I can't help thinking that they are purely for the tourists benefit. There was a pikachu in one temple and the 4 teenage mutant ninga turtles in the grounds of another.

Admittedly there were Buddhist tourists visiting and worshipping but there were a lot of other tourists taking a lot of photos, me being one of them.

Today was a long day, Chiang Rai is 3 hours from Chiang Mai but in the heat, I wasn't complaining about 6 hours in an AC minibus!

I'm just going to leave the photos here and let you do the history part if you wish but all of them were built within the last 30 years. The one that interested me most was our last stop, the Red temple (that was white) and lady Buddha. This site was built by a wonderful monk who also included a school and a hospital for all of the poorer residents of the area who couldn't afford healthcare or education so they got that as well as a beautiful temple and a MASSIVE lady Buddha (25 floors up and you can look through her eyes).

We also visited a lovely cafe which had created a beautiful garden for its visitors (just happens to be very near all the tourist routes!).

White Temple - Wat Rong kuhn
Blue Temple - Wat Rong Suea Ten
Red Temple - Wat Huay Pla Kang, it's white in colour but just called the red temple as it goes with white and blue.

I don't begrudge a country encouraging tourism, I just think Thailand has enough to bring people to their county without these but equally it's nice to have new temples, glorious temples that are modern and amazing.Read more