Chiang Mai III - Temples

Indeed, the Rose of the North, Chiang Mai, has countless temples. One cannot even start to count.

Someone said if you haven't been to Doi Suthep, then you haven't been to Chiang Mai at all. We made our way there, up the spiralling road up the mountain and then 300 steps up to the temple. The temple is huge, majestic and elaborated. One should take the time to notice and appreciate the beauty of it. The bells hanging at the edge of the roof, the wishes hanging on the rows of golden bells, the gold statues, the coins stuck onto a piece of stone, even the tiles, everything seems to be made with care and thoughts. Also a mini garden with beautiful animal/monk/child-like statues (like a mini heaven), you will see at the back of the temple. Around the temple, there are many cute statues that would bring a smile on your face.

Worth a mention - the oldest temple in Chiang Mai, right in the city. We did not get to enter as we were in shorts. Unfortunately, this one is becoming touristy, they even charge for loaning you something to wrap in if you want to enter. We did have a tour around the surrounding, go to the back and you'll see elephant statues along with other delicately designed accompanying temples. Many of the temple do look similar.

Here's some quotes (click on picture to magnify) I snapped from one of the temples, they are on different trees around the compound. I thought it would be nice to share them. I do like most of them, they do make a lot of sense. The few favourites of mine are "If there is nothing that you like, you must like the things that you have" and "Until death, there is nothing enough". Guess life should be as simple as it is, we are borned with nothing, remember?

One of the more unique temples we saw. This is somewhere in the middle within the gates. Sister likes this best apparently. We weren't not allowed to go up, so we could only look from far. There are also many other interesting temples around this one.

The cutest award goes to this one, outside the gates, its along Thapae Road. They even have a Donald Duck statue. There are many animal statues and makes it almost zoo-alike. There is no other similar to this.

My favourite beside Doi Suthep is this. I don't remember names for these temples as we didn't specifically look for them, it was just on the map and we decided to have a look. This one has a grand entrance, look at the stone entrance. Then most of the temple is built with wood (or at least it looks like it), then there are massive baskets of yellow flags (not sure of its significance). At the little green garden behind, there was also a monk reading, with a dog sitting besides him... so peaceful.