Wat Montien in Chiang Mai is hard to miss. Sitting along the edge of the northern moat of the old city, it’s ginormous Buddha soars high above the surrounding buildings. With Wat Kuan Ka Mah next door and Wat Lok Molee across the street, it seems to be a well-visited temple by those attracted to the city’s wats. Google, on the other hand, doesn’t think much of Wat Montien.

As with many other wats in Chiang Mai, you have a choice of spelling with Wat Montien. Wat Mon Tien, Wat Mon Tian. Wat Morntheran, Wat Mounthien, and Wat Morn Thean all are acceptable. And all provide very little information about the wat as search terms. The results for ‘Wat Morntheran’ all use it as a location to pin point Wat Lok Molee, which would lead you to believe of the two Wat Montien is the more famous. But there is tons of info on Wat Lok Molee, the best you’ll get for Wat Montien is a nice selection of traveller’s photos. Yup, that humongous white Buddha is a crowd pleaser even of no one seems to know much about the temple.

Perhaps its age works against it. In a city filled with temples dating back hundreds of years, Wat Montien is relatively new (or at least is in its current version). It’s the first temple where I ran across Luk Nimit, the large round stone balls buried under the cardinal points of the Ubosot at temples. Wat Montien’s are still sitting next to the wat, waiting for an auspicious date for burial and consecration of the bot. Until then, monks can not be ordained at the wat.

The Buddha, built solely by Wat Montien’s monks, was only finished in June 2010. It has a slightly Hindu feel to it and is supposedly the only Lanna Buddha in Chiang Mai. It certainly is the largest. The wat too is unique, built on two floors with the ubosot on top and a large hall filled with brightly painted murals of the Buddha’s life underneath. And the whole thing is done in a reddish brown color with tons of cream-colored doodads. Ornate, to say the least, even the monks’ quarters are festooned with fanciful Buddhist imagery.

From reading the few traveller takes I could find about the temple, it appears that most of the monks who call Wat Montien home are from Laos. Which helps explain some of the not that familiar in Thailand architectural accents including a large dok so fa gracing the roofline of the ubosot. There are lots of dragon-looking naga throughout the complex, with plenty of flights of stairs thanks to the temple being built upward as well as outward. If you’ve read my posts about Laos, then you know how fond Laotians are of stairs.

The first time I visited the wat with my friend Noom, the buildings were all closed but you could climb up to the outer floors which offer a nice bird’s eye view of the surrounding city, all set off by the small pagodas that decorate the perimeter of the temple. On my most recent visit the lower assembly hall was opened and manned by a trio of monks all busy reading the newspaper. Maybe the monks don’t go into full monk mode until their temple has been properly blessed.

Everyone seems to agree that when finished Wat Montien promises to be quite a gem. No need to wait for whenever that date is, it already is worth visiting. I’m just trying to figure out how they are going to bury the luk nimit since the ubosot is on the second floor. Maybe that little problem is what is holding up the final part of the temple’s construction.

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