White Temple - Chiang Rai

So far my idea on Thailand temples is that once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. Mostly they are all the same to me, lots of gold and jewels, blue, white, and red, mythical creatures. The White Temple though is unlike anything that I have ever seen.

To me it looked like a giant snowflake. An all white main building intricately covered with little pieces of mirror. One of the main differences between the white temple and other ones is that the white one gives off a modern feel and the other ones you feel take you back in time. It was very very clean and no big walls around it. There is no entrance fee and you can see the whole place from the outside as there is no big walls surrounding it like other temples. Its nice cause then you can take in the whole thing at once from far away. its a little bit harder with the other temples because you are so close
Around the temple was very well kept grass and a series of connected ponds with fish in them. A huge variety of fish in fact, they had ones that were about half the size of me and other ones that you could only see if you looked really closely. They seemed to travel in packs and once in a while they even jump out of the water.

Around the ponds and on the grass were beautiful white sculptures of mythical creatures. There were trees around the temple that had things sort of like shrunken heads hanging from them but none of them were they same, they all seemed to have a different style. Some were golden and others were white. Some more realistic than others and some of mythical creatures. I think that this temple would have been a good one to get a guide for because there seemed to be a lot of symbolism.

On the front of the temple there is a bridge that crosses over a pit with hundreds of hands reaching up from the ground.
Once taking off your shoes and inside it is rather simple compared to other temples. Sitting front in center is a wax monk with glasses which looked pretty realistic (dont know why they didnt have a real monk) and then painted walls. Only 3 of the 4 walls was painted and they were just about to start the other one. The wall behind the monk seemed to be some sort of heaven and the wall by the door was a sort of hell. the ones on either side depicted people floating on clouds heading towards the heaven side. The hell side was much more interesting though. All over the wall was painting of common western characters among the flames. People like Superman, Jack Sparrow, Batman, Spiderman, Harry Potter, Ben 10. So many different movie and tv show characters. I thought it was really odd because Buddhism seems to be so peaceful and they dont ever bash anyone. But these painting depicted almost everything American. One of the trucks that was driving into the flames even had an American flag and there was other things like the World Trade Towers. Just odd.

Outside the gates there was what looked to be another temple but gold this time. This was just the bathroom. Not the cleanest bathroom even but it was just all decorated in gold.

After that I had to run back to the van because they were just about to leave without me and we were on our way.