Above, on the road to Chiang Rai in the early morning.

Chiang Rai, like Chiang Mai, is a city of about a million people that combines old and new, secular and religious life. Although it is three hours by car from Chiang Mai, I wanted to make the trip to see Wat Rong  Khun (The White Temple) a ghostly looking complex with many unique (and some pretty bizarre) features.

Construction of the temple began in 1997. The whitewashed exteriors are covered with pieces of mirrored glass, so the whole thing seems to shimmer.

The first suggestion of weirdness is the heads hanging from the trees.

That one on the right looked to me like Spider Man. And the super hero theme was to recur inside the main temple.

The path to that structure is framed on both sides by a sea of outstretched hands, and a pile of skeletons and bones, all white. This, we were told, was the artist’s vision of Hell.

To escape this  Hell, and to finally break free of the cycle of death and rebirth, one must attain an enlightened state. This is represented by the bridge that leads into the temple.

The interior of the main building is covered with a hodgepodge of Buddhist imagery and totally unrelated figures, celebrities to super heroes. One interpretation: superheroes will not defeat evil: we have to do that ourselves.

No photos allowed inside. Here’s one from the web. Note the Twin Towers on the left hand side of the picture.

Later we visited another modern temple, this one done in a blue palette.

Paintings depicting the Buddha’s life fill the interior.

Here, he is born and immediately takes his first steps.

We finished the day back in Chai Mai, at Wat Suan Dok, to see the temple and also what is basically a royal cemetery dating back to the 14th century.

Many of these monuments (stupa) hold the remains of members of the royal family of Thailand.

Also here, the golden  pagoda erected in 1373 to house another treasured relic of the Buddha.

This felt like a fitting end to what was a day of mourning across the country, as people everywhere in Thailand prepared for ceremonies related to the King’s funeral.

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