THAILAND 🇹🇭:Wat Rong Khun: The White Temple of Chiang Rai, Thailand

Wat Rong Khun: The White Temple of Chiang Rai, Thailand
This bizarre-looking white temple located about five km south of Chiang Rai City is the brainchild of Chiang Rai-born visual artist and painter Chalermchai Kositpipat. He brings an unconventional approach to temple architecture, fusing elements from his own imagination (white, not gold, as a pure colour to embody the sacredness of temples) with orthodox Buddhist teachings about heaven, hell, karma and earthly sins.
The temple is filled with Buddhist symbolisms, from its layout, architecture, all the way to the ornate reliefs and mirror decorations. You can only enter the Ubosot (main chapel) from the front, via the narrow bridge that passes over a pool of upturned, beseeching hands representing suffering souls in hell. From here, there’s no turning back, as the only way is to ascend ‘heavenwards’ to through the pathway guarded over by demons to the Ubosot.
In a way, Wat Rong Khun is similar to Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcolona. When Chalermchai first conceived the idea of building the wat, he laid out a great grand plan for its design and construction but, like Gaudi’s work, it will never be completed. Constructed in 1998, the temple’s main chapel won’t be completely finished (with all decorations and murals) before 2020, let alone the other structures surrounding it. When completed, Wat Rong Khun will have a total of nine structures fully decorated with the swirly reliefs and mirrors that the wat has become famous for.
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