Day 4: Black & White

On the fourth day of our trip, we embarked on a 4 hour ride to Chiang Rai, a small town near Chiang Mai, to visit the White Temple (Wat Rong Khun) as well as the Black House (Baan Si Dum). The road trip was surprisingly bumpy and it was not as therapeutic I would imagine a journey to the countryside to be.

We first arrived at the White Temple in Chiang Rai. Contrary to my preconceived beliefs, the White Temple and the Black House are actually both contemporary art exhibits. It was really crowded with tourists from all over the world. However, it had so many visitors that the beauty and serenity of the place was mired with loud noises and visual distractions. The sentry even had announcements in Chinese to keep the Chinese visitors in place. The place was generally disorganized and many visitors did not follow the instructions given when they had to walk the bridge or stop taking pictures when inside the temple. I felt that this could have been better managed by placing more clear cut information guides outside the temple to educate visitors instead of yelling all the time, which not only vexes the visitors, but also destroys the pristine image of the White Temple. Inside the temple, everyone was amazed by the murals. Particularly, our team and the professors, were more amazed by modern illustrations on cartoon characters on the walls. According to the tour guide, they were apparently meant to represent “temptations” or “heroes” in a real life, and was meant to convey the message that these are not real, and the only salvation lies only in oneself and the ways of the Buddha.

It was really intriguing to me as to why they selected the use of modern characters. The guide informed us that it is an effort to attempt to attract young people to come and visit the temple. However, since no pictures could be taken within the halls of the temple, how they are going to market this besides word of mouth perplexes me still. However, it did seem like a novel and brilliant idea to use such representations as I feel that such fictional characters from all over the world has indeed played a part in shaping modern day Chiang Mai as well. Thus, it is definitely interesting to see them incorporated into the temple.

 

After which, we went to the Black House, which was a half an hour bus ride away from the White Temple. It was quite strange to me why the artist built 36 houses with all kinds of strange relics inside, mostly consisting of buffalo horns and hair. It was really hard to grasp the significance of the artwork there, especially without any guidance or explanation.