The Blue Temple - Wat Rong Suea Ten วัดร่องเสือเต้น

After leaving the White Temple, we visited Chiang Rai's newest colorful attraction: Wat Rong Suea Ten, the Blue Temple!

Blue Temple

The blue temple is brand-new - it just opened last year in 2016. This temple was designed and built by another local artist who got his start as an apprentice artist at the White Temple, before setting off to construct his own project.

outside the Blue Temple

The temple is re-built on the site of an old, abandoned temple. The artist wanted to rebuild it in a special way, using the color blue to represent the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha. (Why blue represents Dharma, I don't know... but it sure does look nice!)

the beautiful temple

In fact, before we had joined this tour, neither Pinky nor I had ever heard of this temple, but it is going to be one of the big new destinations in the province soon! When we heard the name, we were afraid it was going to be a little tacky, or too much of a rip-off of the White Temple, but it turns out that it's actually really beautiful!

entering the temple

I've never seen a blue temple before. Most Thai temples are red or gold, or built of dark wood. This one is really unique and special, and it's completely free to visit!

incense burner

The inside is cool and dark, and the cool blue colors make the interior feel so quiet and calming.

the central Buddha image

Out in the temple grounds, even the chedi, the central stupa containing a Buddhist relic, is painted in blue and gold! This is an original part of the temple, and I think it's so cool that the artist's vision even reaches to this old part of the temple.

blue chedi

For a few baht, you can buy a colored candle and float it in a big bowl of water. These candles are very much like what you'll find outside a temple on Loy Krathong night. Each color corresponds to the day of one's birth according to the traditional Thai colors of the day.

floating candles

This was an unexpected destination, and one that we would never have heard about on our own. It turned out to be one of my favorite sites that we saw that day!

that's us at the temple!

We only stayed about 45 minutes at the Blue Temple before we headed off to our next colorful destination: The Black House!