Weekend in Chiang Rai

This weekend I went to Chiang Rai to check out the famous White Temple and a few other well-known sites. It was a quick and busy trip.
We left Thursday night after our classes were done. After a 4-hour bus ride, we arrived in Chiang Rai around 9pm. We checked into our hostel and grabbed a bite to eat. My friend Leslie was in the middle of eating her sandwich when she saw a cockroach sitting on the other half. We all freaked out. It was an interesting dinner, to say the least. While we were walking to our hostel I noticed a ton of roaches and rats on the street which was quite gross. Chiang Rai was a lot dirtier then Chaing Mai for sure.
Friday morning we left at 8 for our day tour of Chiang Rai. Our first stop was the White Temple. It was so beautiful. The temple was built by a very famous Thai artist who is from Chiang Rai. After he became rich and famous, he returned to Chiang Rai to build the temple for his village, He has paid for the whole thing by himself. He will only accept donations of less than 10,000 baht (about $300) because he wants to be able to make the temple how he wants it and not have people control him. The temple is constantly changing and nowhere near done. He is always adding to it. So I could come back in 20 years and it would look different which is pretty cool! The reason that is is all white on the outside is to represent the purity of the Buddha.

 This part of the Temple represents Hell. There are lots of pop culture references throughout the temple. Faces of famous people are all over the inside and outside of the temple.

Inside the temple is covered in murals. When you walk in the door the wall is the face of a demon and things that the artists considers evil- there were minions, George Bush riding a rocket, spiderman, Kung-foo panda, Michael Jackson among many others.  As you walk back towards the Buddha the colors get lighter until you reach the Budha. Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in the temple. There is a museum where you can purchase all the parts of the murals inside. I bought one of George Bush riding a rocket.

Our group at the temple

Next stop, the blue temple. This temple was painted by an artist who also worked on the white temple. He is also from Chiang Rai. The temple was just finished in 2016 and is slowly becoming a tourist attraction. While we were there-there weren't too many people there which is always nice.  The blue in this temple represents the calmness of the Buddha.

Next up was a tea plantation. We got to sample a few types and enjoy the view

Next was the stop I was looking forward to all day! The monkey cave! There is a temple that the monkeys pretty much just took over and it became a huge tourist attraction. There are 4 different groups of monkeys at the temple. They rotate throughout the day so they all get fed lots of bananas from the tourists. Once one group is done, they head up the mountain and the next group comes down. When you walk in you get a stick to hit the ground to scare the monkeys away if they are being too aggressive, which was a little scary, The guide gave us each a banana to feed the monkeys. Once they saw you had food you were done for. The surrounded you and stared at it. One was tugging on my pants begging for the banana so I got scared and tossed it to the ground and that was it for me. I was happy to watch everyone else feed them after that.

The monkey cave was quite an experience, to say the least!
Next, was the scorpion temple with a view of the Myanmar and Thailand border. There is a small river that separates the country but you can tell which side is which. Myanmar has all kinds of colorful houses. It is hard to see the river in the pictures, it was hard to find in person because it is a brown color so it blends in.

Last, but not least. Our final stop for the day was the golden triangle. This is the place where Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand all meet but are separated by rivers.

 In front, is Thailand, the land on the left is Myanmar, and the right is Laos. There are 2 casinos pictured. One is the golden dome on the Laos side and the other is a red building towards the back on the Myanmar side but it is harder to see. Gambling is illegal in Thailand, so there are lots of casinos along the border! It is called the golden triangle because back in the day when the opium trade was still huge, they would trade a pound of gold for a pound of opium.

Our tour group

It was a very long day! Our tour lasted almost 12 hours. We were ready to go back to our hostel and relax! we stated at the Happynest hostel in Chiang Rai it was super cute!

The next morning, we slept in a bit, got breakfast and checked out the Cat N Cup Cafe while we waited to catch our bus back home to Chiang Mai.