The tour was supposed to include a visit to a market in the Golden Triangle area on the Thailand side. But our guide offered to take anyone not keen on another market visit up the mountain to a temple at the top. Every single one of us opted for the temple visit.

The temple is known to locals as the Scorpion Temple and contains an interesting assortment of temples and overlooks across to Myanmar/Burma. It also had mannequins of various Buddhist monks, who are obviously revered figures. This was the first time I had seen this practice – in other parts of Thailand, you’ll see photographs of famous Buddhist monks, but the life-size examples takes that reverence to a whole new level.

We had plenty of time to explore the temple and its various buildings. They’re obviously newer structures than most of the other temples I’ve seen in Thailand, and it was fascinating to see what some of the other ruins may have looked like when they were created. For example, a common image is of the Buddha seated on the snake-like body of Naga with the snake heads fanned out behind the Buddha. This is often reduced to just the Buddha and sometimes the snake body base. This temple had what appeared to be a brand-new statue of this type, so I could see what the other, ruined versions were meant to look like.

After our visit to the Scorpion temple, we visited a Hill Tribe village. Tomorrow’s post will detail this visit.

Title quote: Derived from MacBeth, William Shakespeare