Tokyoahead - Temples of Chiang Mai, Thailand

If you want to see many historically valuable artifacts of Thai Culture in one place, Chiang Mai is definetely the place to go. Not only does it have a good climate and friendly people, a diverse cuisine and a very attractive price level, but also a landscape so full of temples that you harldy need to get into a car to see more of them than you would want to see in a day. The different temples, monasteries and surrounding buildings show how religious life truly is interwoven here with everyday life as if the whole town was only one big monastery.


Not only that you can see a lot of really old buildings, ruins and ancient artifacts but also new ones under construction and renovation showing how fragile the buildings are and with how much care they are still maintained today despite the fact that they are not only for tourism but rather true worship. Which, on the other hand might attract less money from foreign tourists but surely attracts more money from the Thai religious visitors, donating to secure their health and luck.

While some temples, depending on who was teaching there and what specific things they are famous for might have extremely ornate doors, roofs and statues in front of them, others are rather simple and concentrate on showing you how elegant Thai architecture can be.

You might discover golden pagodas after a turn into a small alley and in the inside donation jars that are so numerous that they hardly fit into the temple. The many buddha statues in all sizes, donated by the richer people are proudly presented around the end wall of each temple, along with the daily donations in fruit and an incredible array of flowers.

Some of the temples are even completely built of wood, here the oldest teak temple in the country, others completely made of stone and the wood beeing destroyed already centuries earlier. The stone prevails in most cases and shows parallels to the bordering cultures of Cambodia, marking a strong diffference to the Temples in the same country, further to the south.

Still many patterns remain the same, be it the gold-plated buddhas, reclined or standing, or the repeating carvings in the alcoves.

Many things are new, and often you can see people working inside the temples, ornating statues with clay or carving intricate patterns into puzzles made of wood, combining them into huge ornaments for the temples under which shadows they are working.

As such, wondering through the city leaves you astonished about the small and big buildings, be they ruins or in perfect shape, the diversity in monsters, daemons, angels and gods, protecting, beeing slain or whishing you good luck for he remainder of your jurney.

The diversity leaves you confused wether you should focus on the intricate detail, the grand picture or the scenery between rivers, the sun & shadows, monks doing wordly cleaning or the sunset rounding off the images.

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Temples of Chiang Mai, Thailand

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