The White Temple, Chiang Rai, & Mae Sai Visa Run

Mae Sai is a town with a bridge crossing into Burma from Thailand. It's a place people go to extend their tourist visas. Locals there sell lots of fruit wine and the other usual Thai thingy-ma-bobs. And that's really all that can be said about the town of Mae Sai.

The actual town of Mae Sai is not the interesting part about this trip. As a traveller you might have to make a visa run now and then, and many stories are less than encouraging. My own experiences with visa runs have left me running back to my temporary city of Chiang Mai. But the trip to Mae Sai can be made into a great little adventure. Here's what you'll need in your imaginary adventure bag:

• A vehicle - preferably a hired 110cc scooter, so that you can experience all that lovely plastic rattling and coughing while you drive at 80km along the highway.
• A passenger - this has to be someone who doesn't complain about having a sore backside, or not having toilet stops for several hours.
• Toilet roll - for when you actually do find a bathroom.
• A towel - you can sit on this to ease your sore backside, and use it to dry you off after splashing about in rivers along the way.
• Sunscreen - the amount of times humans have ended up looking like lobsters because they "forgot the sunscreen" must be astronomical.
• Clothes - I would recommend two shirts and a pair of pants for the more brutish of our species, and a sundress, bikini, lingerie, tank top, shorts, jersey, t-shirt, jeans, high heels and make-up, all in a Louis Vitton bag, for the more sensible of our species. Not! Go as minimal as possible - you're the one who has to lug it around everywhere you go. Plus you're weighing down that 110cc scooter.
• Camera - and the charger.
• Mosquito spray - you think you know all about mosquitoes? Welcome to the world's most incomprehensibly mean mosquitoes. I think they lacked love growing up.
• A bad sense of direction - this talent proves to be invaluable when you find yourself parked at the top of a mountain exclaiming, "I've found the top of the world!"
• An easygoing nature - you're about to eat at places on the side of the road that will put all sorts of creatures on your plate, and you're about to stay at places where the ceiling drips brown goo - into your eye. You're probably also about to drink all night in a dodgy little bar when it's election weekend, and therefore drinking is temporarily banned. On top of that, you're going to come across hundreds of people trying to sell you all the same touristy junk they try and sell you in Chiang Mai. And because you forgot the sunscreen, you're going to be horribly grumpy and sunburnt. All in all, you've got to have taken a massive dose of chill pills when you were a teenager, and they're still busy working their way through your system now. Mai bpen rai, no worries, hakuna matata.

Enjoy the (many) photos from our trip to Mae Sai:

Wat Rong Khun, aka The White Temple, in Chiang Rai. 

Amazing glittery statues at Wat Rong Khun.

A weird dragon/sea creature continually throwing up.

Wat Rong Khun.

Spot the eyeball, and the red fingernail.

More intricate statue-design.

My boyfriend pointing at evil-looking statues.

By far the best temple I've ever seen. And I've seen way too many.

Moody!

The white temple roof against an overcast sky.

A pig statue on a corner of a roof.

A cow statue on an opposite end of the roof.

A beautiful golden building on the temple grounds.

Notice the detail on the flames?

Even the traffic cones matched the evil look of the temple.

Some terrifying whisky.

One last shot of the temple before leaving.

After being back on the road for a little while, we decided to stop and get lost here.

The usual Northern Thailand landscape.

A road to nowhere.

Roadtripping in style!

Finally in Chiang Rai. This is the clock tower in the centre of the town.

Some golden Roman soldier statues, in Thailand? A bit odd.

The cosy little bar in Chiang Rai, where we ended up drinking with the locals til the early hours.

A very strange place we stopped at for some food - Cabbages and Condoms.

An infographic on condoms at Cabbages and Condoms.

Another random stop, which led us to spindly bridge over a river.

The river where we perfected the art of skipping stones.

Myself and some local kids playing in the water.

Peace!

Almost at Mae Sai.

Our final destination: Mae Sai. Now to drive all the way back.

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Doi Thung royal villa

Another place related with Somdet Ya, the mother of King Bhumiphol, is her royal villa in the north of Thailand. Located on a hilltop halfway between the town Chiang Rai and the Thai-Burmese border in Mae Sai, this villa was one of the most favorite residence places of the Princess Mother. The hilly landscape reminded her of her long-time home in Switzerland (though the hills there are much lower and it is much warmer), and it was in this area where she worked on helping the villagers to stop growing opium and selling their daughters into prostitution by teaching them to grow vegetables and other crops instead. The area around the royal villa even became a district named "Mae Fa Luang" in 1992 - Mae Fa Luang (mother from the sky) was the name she was know to the hill tribes.

The royal villa complex consists of three parts. One is of course the villa instead with a small flower garden around. As with all royal compounds one has to wear "appropriate" clothes to enter, or instead don one of the ugly blue overtrousers at the checkpoint not to show the bare legs. The buildings form a nice mixture of traditional northern Thai (Lanna) architecture with elements known from Switzerland like the flower boxes on the window. Located on the top of the hill, one has a beautiful view over the hills from the veranda.

On the other side of the street is a large flower garden, with small ponds, a circular flower bed, many orchids of course. Though I prefer the natural landscapes, this nicely designed artificial one was also enjoying.

Not far from the villa is another attraction, the temple Wat Phra That Doi Thung, which I will feature another time.

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Wat Rong Khun

After leaving Mae Sai it was already late afternoon, so we arrived at the extraordinary tempe Wat Rong Khun (วัดร่องขุ่น) just shortly before it was closed for the day. I had never heard anything about the Thai artist Chalermchai Kositpipat before, so when hurrying through the gallery next to the temple before it was closed at 5 PM I did not get much about his art either. But that is no wonder, as I still don't know much about Thai Buddhism nor the Thai art. Anyway, even for a ignorant farang the temple is very impressive, and it's no wonder it is becoming a tourist attraction of Chiang Rai now.

The temple is located on Thai highway 1, on the way from the city Chiang Rai towards the south, about 10 km from the city. Exit at the intersection with road 1208. The temple is just a few metres away from the intersection, quite impossible to miss the striking white ornate building if you have taken the right exit from the main highway.

When we visited the place in 2006, the temple already looked nearly finished, at least the whole front part was complete, and construction was limited to the sides and behind of the central room holding the Buddha image - unlike normal temples it is actually a huge Buddha painting with only small statue in front. But already when you enter the temple over the bridge, the corpses in the water under the bridge are something never seen in Buddhist temples. But I guess to fully get all the symbolism within the building one has to find a book explaining all about it, but there was nothing like that in English in the souvenir shop. Maybe after the temple will be finished this year it will have someone bother to write something for those who cannot read Thai.

While I was strolling around the place, I was suddenly called to pose for a family photo - somehow someone from family caught the artist himself, and apparently he didn't mind to pose with us. Pity I did not know his importance then, otherwise I would have tried to do a portrait photo for Wikipedia as well.

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