The museum was amazing! It was called the Black Temple (to oppose the famous White Temple I am sure) or officially the Bandaam museum and it was created by a famous Thai artist named Thawan Duchanee. This was probably the freakiest and most bizarre place I have ever been in my life and certainly on this trip. He essentially created forty black houses made out of various materials and in different architectural styles, all varying in size found spotting his wooded land. The quirky part about it is that he displays his somewhat outrageous collection of bones, animal skins, horns, skulls etc. that he has collected from around the world. Everything is presented in an unique way whether a skull and horns may create the back of a chair or perhaps you might find an entire skeleton laying under a house on stilts. In one house as you peer through the window you can see hundreds of skins hanging as if they were just slaughtered. This place is not fit the faint of heart but the way it is all presented is very artistic and not grotesque at all. The artist says that he is inspired by these artifacts and he uses the museum to continue painting. (He will hole up in one of the various houses and that one will be closed off to the public that day). His work can be seen as well and there was definitely a dark undercurrent in all of his paintings but they were fantastic.
After our dark and twisty visit, we were ready to find our adventure park and were pretty excited about the adrenaline rush. Although it still took some time, we found it easier than we had before and boy were we surprised! We arrive at this desolate camp with chairs turned over and absolutely not a soul around. At first we thought we were in the wrong place and perhaps this pathetic looking area was just the practice area but it shortly became clear that this was in fact the park. The king swing we were expecting was literally a swing on a rope and the long zip lines through the jungle were tiny and not at all in the jungle! It was laughable but since no one was there it was easy to save face and leave quickly. Definitely not what we were expecting!
Having more time for the day than we thought, we ventured to the White Temple (Wat Rong Khun), which was a modern Buddhist temple built by an artist in 1998. The temple was the most striking of the Buddhist temples I have ever seen not because of the richness of the materials used (it was not white marble but simply painted white) but with the attention to detail on all of the statues and all of the glittering glass pieces imbedded to make it look richly decorated. We took a ton of photos trying to capture the details of the hundreds of hands reaching up out of the abyss to grab at a pot used for donations and the faces of the gargoyle type men seemingly screaming out in pain as they looked up out at you; in fact, the temple was rather darkly decorated save for the brilliance of the white paint. It was really great to see and easy to find for once!
Feeling a bit fatigued from navigating we headed to the plaza to take in a movie and we actually had a blast. We were literally the only people in the entire theater (except for the couple necking in the back) which I was thankful for because I screamed a couple of times (I am my mother's daughter!). We had such a great time we are thinking about seeing the Bond movie at the IMAX theater in Bangkok.
We both absolutely loved Chiang Rai and really wished we had another day to spend there. The city was very laid back and just seemed to have a more authentic feel than Chiang Mai and we would come back in a heart beat. The scenery was so lush and beautiful you could stare at it forever and the people were exceptionally friendly and always trying to overcome the language barrier with smiles. It was simply a wonderful place!
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