Chiang Mai, Wat Si Suphan

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Wua Lai Road is a famous street in Chiang Mai where hand crafters are specialised in silver and aluminium. The streets has dozen of shops who sell jewels,  accessories and certainly coins. But I’m not here to buy coins here, but just to have a look to a special looking temple and some craft work around.

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This particular temple is entirely covered by silver.

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Not only the temple but the statue around it. Well, I’m not sure about this one. That might be “silver” paint in that case.

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Front side. A panel tells women that they cannot enter inside this place. I thought Buddhism was more open than this! That’s rude. I won’t go neither. I think religion is a pretext for men to keep control on women. All of these religions give the power to men. The top of the pyramid is always occupied by a man. Simple coincidence? I don’t think so.

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The roof is very detailed.

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My favourite side. The back has this gigantic piece of silver (?).

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Very detailed carving (or sculpting, I’m not sure how they obtain this shape).

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The bottom of the temple has some more carvings that surprisingly represent different cities around this planet. Is it for tourists? maybe…


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Actually, we have visited this place first when we arrived but I think it’s more logical to show this at the end. That’s one masterpiece these hand crafters are able to make here. Quite impressive again. Apparently this is not Silver but aluminium. Siver might be too precious and expensive today (and the price will go higher during the following years).

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Monks and workers work together. Seeing the mask they use, these products are certainly not very healthy. This piece must go somewhere on the temple we have just visited.

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That’s how they create a pattern onto a piece of aluminium. They stick onto to surface the pattern drawn on paper and use chisel plus hammer to create the relief.

That’s it for today. I’m going back to the hotel and work on my blog because I’m so late. I must stop visiting more places if I want to be able to catch up with this website. See ya!

2 thoughts on “Chiang Mai, Wat Si Suphan

  1. Quel boulot ! La finesse des détails … impressionnante, vraiment ! Et puis ça change un peu de l’or !

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