236. | Chiang Rai

I am writing this post in Laos. I spent three full days and two short days in this small town in northern Thailand.

An experience I wanted to have was missing from my stay here. With a little change of color, I got something else instead.

The White Temple

This is Asia, baby!

So, even leaving Pai showed the confusion that often appears here in the world of peace. It’s good to stand around a bus with nine completely different tourists, and none of us are sure that we are standing next to the right bus. You have to ask three times where the bus is going.

Several buses left in front of the travel agency / motorbike rental shop after nine o’clock. It doesn’t matter which one you put your butt on. Because they send you from one to the next, as if they don’t know which driver is going where either.

The point is that we left, and since the question of where we were going was asked many times, no one was worried.

One of my friends called me around 1 am. We talked for four hours. I woke up at 7 am, so even I easily calculated that I had slept for about two hours. I made up for the rest on the bus. I only woke up at the bus stops.

We were jolted for almost four hours. I’m starting to get the feeling that the cars here have some kind of speed limiter built into them and they simply can’t go fast.

I woke up in Chiang Rai at the bus terminal.

This is bad!

Because I bought a ticket that included a half-hour stop at the White Temple, located 10 km from the city, to see the building. The ticket that included a stop there was 200 BHT more expensive than the one that didn’t.

Everyone quickly left the bus. I was about to ask the driver how this “we didn’t stop” mistake happened. To which he tells me – he’s such a smart guy – that the White Temple is very beautiful, I shouldn’t miss it!

I tell him: dude! That’s exactly what I was going to ask, why didn’t we stop there. I had such a ticket.

I immediately felt compelled to pull over with the minibus. It said something like it would pull over and come back. I had a feeling that it would be pointless to wait, so I got off too.

The next day I wrote to the travel agency (Fuck! I have no luck with these travel agencies lately) to express my disappointment. They thanked me very much for my tip, which they will use to improve their service, and apologized for the communication misunderstanding.

I replied that there was no communication misunderstanding at all. I clearly asked when buying the ticket if we would stop at the church. They scammed me. The story is that simple.

For the above reasons, I am not showing any pictures of the White Church.

It would have taken me half to three quarters of a day to visit it, and I had a lot to do now.

The Blue Temple

There was a Blue Temple in the city – within a healthy walking distance. I played with the idea that I was color blind, and then the color didn’t matter at all.

So I went to the Blue Temple.

It was a great experience. I had never been in blue before, and I can say: it would have been a shame to miss it either.

Strangely enough, there was also a small market and restaurants within the temple grounds, so I started my Sunday here with a good breakfast.

This is not the first temple in Northern Thailand whose interior walls are decorated with beautiful paintings depicting scenes from the life of Buddha. Outside, extremely beautiful blue statues guard the peace of the temple, so this trip also became an art exhibition.

Entering the temple, the young guy who was the hall attendant was very happy with my respectful greeting. He was grateful and even remembered me when I left. I spent twenty minutes in the room because I was meditating inside.

Life gave me blue instead of white. It was good! The color isn’t the point anyway. Neither is the size. LOL.

The city

I lived 1 km from the city center, so I walked a lot on the busy streets. Due to its size, I got to know the center on the first walk.

There is a part of the city where there are street vendors in the evenings. You can buy everything. I was interested in the food.

I also found two huge market cities. With lots of small streets in one covered place. Here you could buy everything twice. If I wanted to put on a uniform while looking at a new phone, everything would have gone smoothly here.

There were very good restaurants on every street. I tried several, you can easily live well for 60 BHT. In these small restaurants, I always got a small bowl of soup with the main course I ordered. On one occasion, a bunch of spring onions resting on a bed of ice.

I ate very well in this small city.

I also found a good pub, so one evening I had a whiskey coke and a beer.

On my second evening, I was at the huge clock tower in the center that I had visited earlier – located in the middle of the roundabout – when the music started playing. At eight o’clock in the evening, the music played for 10 minutes. Many of us sat there and enjoyed the minutes. The music was so wonderful. I regretted that Shazam didn’t even know what kind of Thai music made the moments magical for me.

It was a fairy tale scene, how the color-changing light effects of the clock enchanted me among the sounds of the music. It turned out afterwards that an old Thai classical song was playing to accompany the light show of the tower.

Plus – now hold on! – I read afterwards that it was made by the same designer who made the White Temple. So fate gave me a little bit of the temple now. At least, I can believe that.

In addition to the good meals, I will definitely be taking this musical clock tower with me from this city.