Earlier this week (November 7), I travelled 3 hours north to the city of Chiang Rai. Its the most northern Thai city, approaching the Burma border. I have to be honest, there isn’t much there, but they do have the Wat Rong Khun, better known as the White Temple.
This temple is a recent construction, having been built in 1998. The site is rather large and there seems to be a lot of ongoing construction.
Looking at the WRK from afar, it’s kind of like looking at the pictures of the Taj Mahal – it looks like a fake background. I don’t know why – maybe it’s because the temple is only white and you lose some depth effects. Artists? Why?
In my reading, I learned that the Wat is made entirely out of white plaster and mirrored tiles. The tiles create various mosaics on the site and adorn many of the statues. It’s very glittery from afar. My simple interpretation is that white represents purity, enlightenment, light, radiance.
Approaching the temple, the first sculpture is of hundreds of hands reaching upwards from ground level. The sculpture flanks both sides of a walkway that leads to a bridge that gets you to the temple. It’s a pretty modern looking sculpture. The hands look as if they represent people in agony. Could they be reaching up from the depths of hell? I assumed that the hands represent some place of pain and suffering because it’s not part of the actual temple and they are coming upfrom the ground vs. The Buddha, the enlightened one, who is always elevated above man. In my picture, notice the single red fingernail amongst the gray of the hands. The grey hands and red fingernail are the only non-white things of the temple. I don’t have an interpretation for this.
To get to the actual temple, there are some devilish looking men that you pass upon entry to a bridge that leads to it. Between the hands and the devilish figures, I wanted to get to the other side – to that of the peaceful Buddha :).
The whole site is very ornate, thebgrounds are totally landscaped, and one does not have the freedom to wander as at other temples. I was with Sharon from Holland when visiting it and as we were crossing the bridge, she happened to touch 1 mirrored tile. As soon as she did this, a voice in English over some loud speaker asked her to not touch. Weird.
Seeing all of the unfinished business on the temple site, my thought was of ‘La Sagrada Familia’ church in Barcelona. That church was started in 1882 and is still not completed (but will be in 2041) Sure enough, the WT is not expected to be completed until 2070.
It was worth the trip – for the temple and a few simple days of relaxation. The night market was quaint and the food court in the market had some interesting offerings – silk worms, bamboo worms, grasshoppers anyone?
Here are some pics:
The Travelling Psychologist 