A Saturday in Chiang Rai

This weekend, Reese and I travelled to Chiang Rai, a city nestled in the northernmost corner of Thailand, and so far north that local agencies offer two-day boat rides to Luang Prabang in Laos. Chiang Rai was founded in 1262 by King Mangrai, who named it after himself: the word “chiang” means city, so a loose translation of “Chiang Rai” would be “the City of (Mang) Rai.” Heir to the kingdom of Ngoenyang, Mangrai unified the city states (or mueangs) of northern Lanna and present-day northern Laos, establishing the Kingdom of Lanna.

Chiang Rai was momentarily the capital of the Mangrai dynasty, but as Mangrai’s territory expanded, the capital was moved several times until settling in Chiang Mai. In 1558, Burma conquered Chiang Mai, and Chiang Rai remained under Burmese rule until 1786. One of Chiang Rai’s claims to fame is that it is where Thailand’s palladium – the Emerald Buddha – surfaced in 1434. The statue was likely created in the north of present-day Thailand, but legend has it that it came all the way from India. According to Burmese chronicles, the Emerald Buddha was promised to the Burmese king but ended up in Cambodia because the ship carrying him was blown off course. According to Cambodian chronicles, the statue was brought to Angkor Wat and was stolen during a Thai invasion.

We arrived in Chiang Rai at eight o’clock in the evening on Friday and took a Grab cab to our hotel in the city centre. The next day, we rented a motorcycle from a contact of the hotel’s owners and began our exploration of the city. Our first stop was the Chiang Rai Clock Tower, a dramatically ornate golden structure standing at the intersection of two major roads. From there, we continued to Wat Mung Muang, a nineteenth-century temple famous for its big golden chedi and fat Buddha statue with comically oversized hands.

Charting a clockwise course around the centre of the old town, we continued to Wat Phra Kaew, the ancient temple where the Emerald Buddha was discovered. Of course, all the structures at Wat Phra Kaew are of a newer provenance, but thanks to its extensive grounds and gardens overgrown with shady trees, it maintains a calm and almost mystical atmosphere. At least, I assume the place usually has a calm and mystical atmosphere; during our visit, it was echoing with the sounds of chainsaws trimming the trees right in front of the main temple.

Our last stop in the centre of Chiang Rai was Wat Phra Sing, a fourteenth-century temple that was once home to Thailand’s second-most revered Buddhist icon, the Phra Phuttha Sihing. Legend has it that this bronze and golden image was cast in Sri Lanka two thousand years ago, eventually making its way through several important Thai cities including Phitsanulok, Ayutthaya, Kamphaeng Phet, Chiang Rai, and Chiang Mai. Somewhere along the way, several images came to be identified with the Phra Phuttha Sihing. One is currently housed in its own temple at the National Museum in Bangkok, another in Nakhon Si Thammarat, and another in Chiang Mai.

We drove westwards from the temple and ascended the mountain where Chiang Rai’s City Pillar Shrine now stands. Besides this northern-style golden and red temple, the complex also houses an octagonal golden stupa. The pillar itself stands at the centre of a platform surrounded by dozens of smaller pillars, all of them wreathed in ceremonial cloths. There is a small altar facing the circles of pillars behind which people pray, and under which a very fat dog was resting while we were making our visit.

Riding across Kok River, we made our way to Wat Rong Suea Ten, also known as the Blue Temple. True to its name, this modern structure is entirely blue, from the phantasmagorical paintings on the inside to the strange statues outside – including multi-headed elephants, winged elephants, and finned elephants. Continuing northward, we made our next stop at the Baan Dam Museum. The museum is a collection of wooden buildings built by contemporary artists in the traditional regional style, or at least employing traditional influences. It houses a host of bizarre items like animal skulls, crocodile skins, and wooden phallic objects.

Being quite far north already, we continued another ten minutes along the main road to a collective of villages. For an entry fee of 300 Baht (one of the steepest entry fees in Thailand), the collective allows tourists to walk around the mock habitations of several ethnicities. It is essentially a more dignified human zoo than those of days past, the difference being that the people have much more privacy and mostly interact with visitors by selling souvenirs. The main “stars” of this village are the Long Neck Karen, a people thus named because the women of this ethnic group wear large metal coils to lengthen their necks. The coils do so by pressing the chest downwards, with additional coils being added as a woman grows older.

The ethics of visiting such villages have been debated on many webpages and I do not pretend to bring a new perspective to the debate, let alone solve it. We decided to see the village out of curiosity, reasoning that although it feels strange and voyeuristic to visit a place just to gawk at its inhabitants, ethno-tourism is a significant source of income for many people who are truly poor. Most of the Karen villagers in Thailand fled Burma due to the civil war and have been unable to hold regular jobs because they have been denied Thai citizenship.

Defenders of visiting such villages also argue that women choose to wear neck coils of their own volition, but I fear I cannot be as naïve. Impoverished Karen women clearly realise that they stand to gain money from tourists by continuing to deform their bodies, which means tourism is at least partly responsible for the survival of this questionable practice. During our visit, we saw many young girls who have already started wearing neck coils, and I imagine that by adulthood such a young woman’s neck can already be long and brittle, which would likely discourage her from discarding the coils even if she wanted to.

Whether visiting a Karen village is ethical or not, there are certainly ways to behave ethically and unethically as an individual. We made sure to ask people whether we could take their picture, saying hello and making some small talk as we passed by. The little girls appeared particularly pleased when we gave them compliments on their clothes, and the adult women just seemed happy to be greeted in the standard, respectful fashion.

Since the route between the village and our next stop was less busy and relatively well-paved, Reese finally relented and let me drive the motorcycle. The mechanics were simpler than I expected, but turning and maintaining balance proved surprisingly difficult with two people on board. To stay on the safe side, I drove the next sixteen kilometres at a speed that never reached fifty kilometres per hour. It annoyed Reese a little, but I believe he had to recognise that one is better off safe than dead.

We only made a brief stop at Wat Huay Pla Kang, a Chinese-style temple with a nine-tiered pagoda and giant white Guanyin statue. Just six or seven kilometres west of Chiang Rai airport, the Guanyin statue was the first structure we saw as we descended the previous evening. From the temple, we drove our longest stretch yet, traversing the twenty kilometres of roads that separate Wat Huay Pla Kang from Wat Rong Khun, the famous White Temple. Designed by the eccentric artist Chalermchai Kositpipat, Wat Rong Khun is a blindingly bright, gaudily ornate and puzzlingly extensive structure. Deviating from the white exterior, its main prayer hall is covered in trippy paintings, which incorporate various far-flung characters like the Minions and Doraemon.

Returning to the city, we made one last stop at Wat Phrathat Doi Khao Kwai, a glittering stupa that stands atop a hill overlooking the city. While it usually offers a good view of Chiang Rai and the surrounding hills, the air was a bit hazy, and we were in any case a bit too tired by then to really take in our surroundings. When we got back, Reese went to take a rest while I made one last circle around the old centre. I reprised our earlier stop by the Chiang Rai Clock Tower and Wat Phra Sing, continuing to the Old City Hall and Wat Klang Wiang.

In the evening, we visited the “Saturday Market” set up along Thanalai Street, which is nicknamed “Walking Street” because it closes to cars for this weekly event. The place was bustling. Visitors flowed in two currents past the stalls, buying all sorts of food from quail eggs and durians to grilled squid. On some of the streets branching off from the main street stood marquees under which people received massages. However, the most interesting part of the market was the stall selling live Siamese rhinoceros beetles, each of which was tied by its horn to its own sugar cane stem. These insects are kept for beetle fighting, a popular spectator sport during which the beetles try to lift each other with their horns.