Doi Suthep is a Buddhist Temple (Wat) towering on a mountain nearby Chiang Mai. It is a short drive from the city, and you can either hire a red songteow or taxi to take you there, or take motorbikes. We opted for the motorbikes—and were glad we did. As we climbed up the winding switchbacks, we were able to get a few glimpses of the city of Chiang Mai (pollution and all).
This is the only Buddhist temple I’ve seen that requires you to pay to enter, but it’s cheap at 30 Baht ($1 USD) if you’re willing to take the stairs, or an extra .75 cents if you want to take their little non-scenic tram up, instead. With our kids in tow—we opted to pay for the small extra fee.
It’s always good to know what the rules are, so we don’t break them!
As always, shoes are removed before entering the temple grounds.
The temple was absolutely massive. It is reported that the temple was first built in 1383, and expanded throughout the years. They built a road to it in 1935, and I’m curious what year it became a major tourist attraction. The parking lot was full of big tour buses, and there was no shortage of foreigners here.
It felt kind of weird to have all of these tourists wandering around the worshipers. Not a very peaceful place to worship, in my opinion.
I thought it was funny how they had a wall of labeled donation boxes where you could specify exactly where you wanted a donation to go.
The grounds were massive. Basically, it was a big square-shaped courtyard with a center chedi (tower) in the center that you could walk around on all sides.
Surrounding the raised temple area was another square shaped courtyard that sat just down some steps, and offered more views of the city. No more city photos from us…but we took advantage of the beautiful gardens for some photo ops of the kids!
We decided to take the stairs down, which were flanked with long decorative necks that led to the multi-headed dragons at the bottom.
It was disappointing to see just how pervasive the tourism was for an otherwise very beautiful temple in a beautiful location.
The vendors were not shy about trying to get you to buy something.
We decided to cross this temple off our list as a potential place to take family who would visit soon. While it was an interesting experience, we were turned off by all of the tourists and tourist junk. We’d much prefer to go to a quieter, more genuine wat that serves more as a place of worship than a tourist trap.
I think the temple guidelines are a good list to live by!
Love that photo of the vendor shaking her finger!! Great expression!