We visited Chiang Rai for one day during our Thailand trip just to see the most famous sight: the White Temple. In this post we share our experience.
How to get there
Chiang Rai is a 3-hour drive from Chiang Mai. We were spending some days there, visiting the temples and the elephant sanctuaries, and we decided to add Chiang Rai as a one-night side trip as part of our Northern Thailand experience.
We took a morning bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai. You can buy tickets in any travel agency or in your own accommodation. Our hostel staff were kind enough to arrange our tickets for us. We got an early bus so that we could do the most of our day.
From the hostel in the Old Town, we took a songthaew to the station and there we took the bus.
The bus was comfortable, and they even give you a snack. The road goes through the hills and the jungle, but the views are nothing spectacular.
Around three hours later, we arrived at a small and old station. Fortunately, our hostel wasn’t far from there, so we grabbed our backpacks and started walking.
The White Temple
After checking in, we set off for a quick lunch and to visit the White Temple. To do that, we walked back to the bus station and hopped on one of the blue buses. We can’t remember the number or anything, but the hostel staff had written it down for us. The bus looked old and weary, but it took us where we needed to go.
It is not hard to know where to get off as you can see the temple from the road, plus on the bus there are probably other tourists doing the same thing.
Once you get off the bus, we crossed the main road and entered the temple. It is a lot smaller than you imagine, but the design is still amazing. Thousands of little details, some very odd in nature, will leave you dumbstruck.
The real name is Wat Rong Khun and it’s actually a private art exhibition on a worn down Buddhist temple. The artist name is Chalermchai Kositpipat and he is still working on other buildings in the complex.
There’s a fee payable but we don’t remember how much it was, probably not a significant amount.
From the moment you walk in you start admiring the bizarre decorations, like a red and white cone with a skull head on top, or a “superhero” of some sort sitting on a bench, or heads hanging from trees. All very weird indeed.
Even the toilet building is incredible: an ornamented golden structure that stands out from the whiteness.
Once you enter the temple, probably the most astonishing features are the bridge, which is surrounded by a lot of outreaching hands (a bit creepy no doubt!) and the gate, which is flanked by sculptures of creatures from mythology. The rest of the visit is just walking around, marveling at all the details in white and silver.
The visit itself didn’t take more than forty minutes and after that we were on our way back to the town of Chiang Rai. To do that, we just stood on the road and flashed a blue bus that came our way. The bus dropped us off at the station.
What else to see in Chiang Rai
After coming back from the White Temple, we had a couple of hours before nightfall, so we decided to see some of the other sights in the city.
We walked to the Clock Tower, which is a golden ornamented structure designed by the same artist of the White Temple, nothing out of this world. We also went to a couple of temples, but none of them were really spectacular.
We had dinner at one of the many joints close to our hostel and then went to bed. The next morning we woke up and took the bus back to Chiang Mai.
Our final thoughts
The city of Chiang Rai is not pretty or picturesque and doesn’t have a lot to see except for the White Temple. There are other sights in the surrounding area and you can also use it as the last stop before crossing to Laos if that’s where you’re going.
If we had known it was possible, we would have done it as a daytrip from Chiang Mai (a long one): start very early in the morning and take the last bus back to Chiang Mai.
Have you been to Chiang Rai? Do you know of any other sights worth visiting? Leave us your comments, questions and thoughts.