Our Trip to Chiang Rai from Chiang Mai

The whole reason we took this 3 hour drive was to see this temple.  The temple I nicknamed "the temple made out of icicles".  It's real name is actually Wat Rong Khun.  It was designed by an artist from Chiang Rai named Chalermchai Kositpipat in 1997.  They say that it won't be fully completed until 2070!  There will be 9 buildings total and one of those buildings will be a crematorium.

We rented a car.  I was pretty nervous because in Thailand, you drive on the left side of the road.  So I told Jason that the only way we would do this (as opposed to riding a tour bus there) was if we could rent car seats as well.  We got this tiny car that had a pretty big interior and was nice.  It was great having a car again, even if it was for only 24 hours!

We saw lots of great things while we were driving, one of the things I noticed was the temperature gauge, did you notice anything different about it? 

Here is Jason focused on driving.

Then Beckham decided to put a damper on our morning and threw up all over his side of the car!  It was so gross!  It oozed from his car seat to the seat below it.  I had nothing but wet wipes and toilet paper to clean it up!  Luckily I had brought a ton of extra diapers so after dumping a whole water bottle on the seat, after I cleaned up the gunk, we open up diapers and spread them out all over the bottom of the car seat to absorb the water and give Beckham somewhere dry to sit.  He felt much better afterwards... I wonder if it had something to do with the windy roads? This mess cost us more to have them clean up than it did to rent the car in the first place.  Oh well, can't get upset over something that is out of your control, right?

Beckham afterwards...

Don't mind us... just on our way to work.

This isn't the greatest picture, it was taken from a moving car, but it still is cool with the farmer with his hat working in his rice field.

Cows...

We finally got here and this place did not disappoint!  It was totally worth the trip to Chiang Rai!

You walk up this path to the entrance of the temple.  Oh I forgot to mention that we forgot to bring "modest" clothes for the temple!  Luckily, my shorts and flip flops were modest enough for the lady there!

As you walk up the path, you see hands coming up, as if they are in a hell.

Inside the temple is completely not what you would expect.  I wan't allowed to take pictures but I will describe it to you.  The inside is brown.  The wall that the front door is on, is covered with worldly distractions.  There is Harry Potter, the guy from the Matrix, Spiderman, Michael Jackson, Captain Jack Sparrow, the USA's Twin Towers in their burning state, I think their is some sort of flying thing from Star Wars (sorry, no disrespect) and other interesting things that everyone would recognize.  Then you follow the images on the wall to people who are flying in these things that like kind of like clouds and they go to the opposite wall which is wear Buddha is and all that represents enlightenment.  All the things you need to let go in order to achieve enlightenment.  It is super cool.

The artist has chosen to cover the grounds with things you might see during Halloween. These evil heads hanging from the tree... there were skull heads on the construction cones...

And the "no smoking" sign is pretty intense as well!

Speaking of intense, check out the golden bathroom!!!

They had special flip flops to put on to go into the bathroom.

Enjoying a rest while dad goes in and checks out the original paintings from the artist that designed the temple.

They had these metal hanging things that you could write your name on and hang for good luck.

And also a wishing well of sorts.

All in all this was a great trip inside our trip to Chiang Mai and I'm so glad we took it!