Last Updated on June 24, 2019 by PowersToTravel
A member of the Chiang Mai triumvirate (the top 3 temples!), Wat Prasingh brought pleasure with more than just visual arts. It offered SHOPPING!
The arts at Wat Prasingh were indeed amazing. Even now, after our return, I think of the golden elephant emerging from the side of the golden temple. It seems these Buddhist artists have no end to their imagination.
We wandered for a while around this complex, with each building offering a different eye-catching art medium.
The Buddha image in the viharn (big temple building) is famous and beloved by the people of Chiang Mai. During the Songkran New Year celebration (which occurs in April each year), the image is taken from the temple and carried around the streets of Chiang Mai. The locals can sprinkle water on it to hopefully gain good luck. In Buddhism, so much revolves around “good luck.” It is the large central statue in the picture below:
When we completed our temple visit, we wandered the large tourist market set up along the outside of the viharn. When I think of Jesus throwing out the money-changers and the sellers in the temple in Jerusalem, which I have to admit, is seldom, I think now of all the vendors at the Buddhist temples.
However, in the Buddhist temples, as I am not religious, I was so pleasantly overwhelmed by the color, texture and often sound; the tourist stalls just added more to the brilliance which assaulted my senses. They offered me a way to take home a little piece of the colorful mosiac around me. I did not find it contradictory at all.
Greg apparently felt the same way, as he orchestrated the following, with traditional hats from the Hill Tribes around Chiang Mai:
As a thank you to the vendor who allowed us to perform this, graciously, without charge, I purchased Greg’s, to bring home.
What should I do with a strange hat? It sits on the head of a very large paper-mache giraffe which hangs from our bedroom wall. I’ll leave that visual to your imagination. In my imagination, when I see the hat on the giraffe I think of a golden elephant.
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More interesting information about the temple
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Wendy, you did it! You brought me so gently into this dramatic scene that I almost thought I was really there.