Hundreds of hands reaching out to the heavens crowd over a pit. It looks like a scene from a rock concert mosh pit or even a scene from a horror movie depicting hell. But it definitely isn’t both, in fact, it’s the farthest thing from anything you might imagine. This is actually the entrance to one of Thailand’s most famous landmarks—Chiang Rai’s White Temple.

HANDS REACHING OUT REPRESENTING OUR EARTHLY DESIRE

From the city’s old bus station, we left our bikes—which our hotel, Chayadol Boutique Resort, provided for free, by the way—in the middle of our Chiang Rai temple run and boarded a bus that would take us to Wat Rong Kun. This structure, which was formerly a run-down Buddhist temple fifteen kilometers south west of town, is now one of Thailand’s most iconic places to visit.

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Our room was already dark when pangs of hunger woke me up. We arrived in Chiang Rai some hours before, but we were too tired to explore the city; besides, Chayadol Boutique Resort’s bed seemed too inviting. We gave in, our planned quick nap blooming into a full-blown snoring concierto. Now fully awake, I took a peek outside and saw the translucent glimmer of the lighted pool below. I was, again, torn. do I swim or find some chow?

PINKS AND SWIRLS AT CHAYADOL’S RECEIVING AREA

Chayadol Boutique Resort is small three-star, modern-styled boutique hotel located about two kilometers away from the Chiang Rai Clock Tower, the city’s town center. From the old bus station where we were dropped from our ride in Chiang Mai, we rented a tuktuk to bring us to the resort—a couple of kilometers seemed nothing if you have no bags with you, but us, we were hefting quite a bit of luggage. The place is, honestly, quite a ways off from downtown. Good thing they have free bikes for guests, and motorcycles to rent out.

I was in need of a pair of boxer shorts since we haven’t done our laundry yet as we were supposed to for a couple of nights running. And since we parked our bikes near the market cum bus terminal area where Chiang Rai’s usual night bazaar runs after our Chiang Rai temple run, we decided to take a peek—I just might score me some muay thai-inspired underwear.

EARLY CROWD AT THE NIGHT BAZAAR

COLORFUL HAND-WOVEN FABRICS

Like most tourist hubs in Thailand, Chiang Rai also has its own night market which I guess are targeted primarily for visitors. I’ve been to Chiang Mai’s Night Bazaar, Bangkok’s Khao San Road, and even Phuket’s Bangla Road. What differentiates this one from those is its level of craziness. This one in Chiang Rai is super tame.

Before crossing over the Mekong River onwards to Laos, we decided to hang out for a few days on the northernmost city of Thailand. We reached Chiang Rai after taking a four-hour bus ride from Chiang Mai. And after taking the rest of the afternoon and evening off at Chayadol Resort, we braved the streets of the city on bikes for the obligatory Chiang Rai temple run the next day.

A YOUNG MONK AT WAT PHRA KAEW  /  OUR BIKES FOR THE COMING TEMPLE RUN

From our map, we marked four temples within the downtown area, plus one more—the famous Chiang Rai White Temple—farther off the city limits. It was easy enough to race through the five ones, well if you consider dodging motorized vehicles easy, but the White Temple put us on a quandary.

Crossing myself three times, we boarded our free bikes and I clumsily pedaled my way to the busy streets of Chiang Rai.