Wat Phra Singh; Wat Phan Tao

This morning, I said today would probably be a busy mishmash of activities. It didn’t quite turn out that way. This afternoon I visited two wats, Wat Phra Singh and Wat Phan Tao, and that was it.

I otherwise took it fairly easy this afternoon. I hope that doesn’t disappoint my avid reader(s) too much.

My guidebook recommends three small museums in Chiang Mai. I’m here for three full days, so I figured I’d do one a day rather than getting museumed out. They’re supposed to be small, but unless they are particularly engaging, I get museumed out easily.

My guidebook said all three are closed Mondays, but open every other day of the week.

After lunch, I picked one up and used Google Maps to head to it.

I had no trouble navigating to the museum, only to find it was closed. I had used Google Maps only for directions and I trusted my guidebook for the other needed information. When I saw that it was closed, I looked at the opening hours Google Maps provided. It told me the museum closes on Mondays and Tuesdays, but it is open the rest of the week. Today is Tuesday.

So much for trusting the guidebook for these things.

Now being skeptical about the guidebook, I looked at Google Maps for the opening times of the other two museums. It said they too are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. I trusted Google Maps rather than going to find out if the guidebook was right about them. I’ll probably fit them in before I leave Chiang Mai.

On to the wats.

Wat Phra Singh

According to my guidebook, Wat Phra Singh is the most revered temple in Chiang Mai. I wouldn’t know about that, but it is beautiful.

I didn’t keep track, but there are probably four or five shrines open to the public, and a few attractive buildings not open to the public. There is also a gold-coloured curved-cone-shaped tower.

The prayer buildings at Wat Phra Sing have the requisite Buddha statues inside. The different shrines have different Buddhas. One is a large gold-coloured one. But there are also smaller black marble Buddhas in another and a crystal Buddha in yet another building.

One of the buildings had doors on opposite sides. In the centre of the building, there is a shrine-like structure, much, much bigger than a dollhouse, but small enough to fit into the not overly large building. Inside that are a couple of Buddha figures, facing each of the doors.

On either side of the central shrine were benches facing each of the doors. Five very lifelike monk mannequins sat cross-legged on each of the benches. There were small signs in front of the mannequins written only in Thai that I think probably gave the names of the monks depicted by each mannequin in real life. But I’m not sure about that.

One of the buildings had some faded and chipped frescoes on the walls.

The grounds of Wat Phra Singh are beautiful, with flowers, rows of trees, and immaculately maintained lawns. There are some benches under some of those trees. I took advantage of one of them to have a nice little shaded sit-me-down.

In one part of the grounds, nailed to the trees, there are many of what I assume were Buddhist aphorisms printed in both Thai and English. One said, “Today is better than tomorrows.” It looked like there was a word scratched out before “tomorrows.” I don’t know what it was, but maybe it would make “tomorrows” closer to grammatically correct.

But that’s not the point. I realize it’s probably a Buddhist, mindfulness, live-in-the-moment adage, but that depressed me. “What, it only gets worse from here?” But maybe it’s only me that thinks like that.

Within the Wat Phra Singh complex, on the way to the toilets (which is how I found it), there’s a little coffee and tea stand with some tables under trees. I wasn’t yet desperate for the toilet, so I stopped for an iced matcha tea with lemon, which I sat and sipped leisurely at a shaded table.

Then I went to the washroom. I know that sounds like too much information, but the washroom experience was a little different. In front of the toilets, a recording alternating between Thai and English repeated over and over again, telling people to please take off their shoes and put on some of the provided slippers.

There was a shoe rack for people’s shoes. Beside it was another rack with loaner plastic clogs. To go pee, I had to take off my shoes, put on the “slippers,” pee, come out, take off the “slippers,” and put my shoes back on. That seems like a lot of work to use a not-particularly-fancy washroom. But if you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. And I can’t say that I was exactly thrilled with the concept of wearing uncleaned footwear that who knows how many other people had worn before me.

Wat Phan Tao

Do you remember from yesterday that I told you about a wat next to Wat Chedi Luang that had no English signs other than a bilingual sign specifying how to behave in a temple? (I provided a picture and transcript of that sign in yesterday’s post.)

Well, it turns out that was Wat Phan Tao.

When travelling, I usually use one or more guidebooks to decide what I want to visit. But I also have a walking tour app. I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but after the first couple of trips I took with it, I’ve never used it as a walking tour app. It also has a feature that displays all the sights on the walking tours that it offers in the relevant city. You can sort those sights by either sight name or distance from where you are.

I use that feature when I’m at a sight and want to fill in some time with something nearby. That’s what I did yesterday after I finished at Wat Chedi Luang. The walking tour app doesn’t include Wat Phan Tao. Instead, the closest sight to Wat Chedi Luang it listed was the Three Kings Monument. Walking there took me past Wat Phan Tao, although, I didn’t know what it was at the time because there were no signs to tell me so.

Today, I looked at my guidebook, which does have an entry for Wat Phan Tao, and saw that I wanted to visit it. So, I got Google Maps to direct me, got there, and said to myself because people would look at me even funnier than they usually do if I said it out loud, “Wait a minute. I’ve been here.”

And there I was.

So, now I know that Wat Phan Tao is not a part of Wat Chedi Luang, but rather a separate wat.

It’s a fairly small temple, with, I think, just one prayer building that’s open to the public. As I mentioned this morning, that’s unusual for the temples I’ve seen in Thailand so far. Most of them are better described as temple complexes, rather than what I think of as temples.

What makes Wat Phan Tao special is that the shrine is made from dark teakwood, with teakwood cylindrical columns inside. That, combined with the large gold-coloured Buddha statue and decorations, gives it a very rich, dignified look. I found it quite impressive, for the second time.

Wow. That was a slow afternoon and this was a short post, weren’t they?

If you’re genuinely nice people, I might make it up to you by doing something I’ve rarely, if ever, done here. I might grace you with not two, but three posts today, with a bonus post about what I got up to in the evening. The reason I rarely if ever do that is because I rarely if ever do anything in the evening other than have dinner. I’m usually too tired and nervous about the dark. I sort of, but not quite, made an exception today to that “only ate dinner in the evening” rule. I might come to you with a post about that soon. Or I might go to sleep without writing it. We’ll see, dear.