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I guess even for wats in Chiang Mai that real estate mantra of location, location, location matters. I can think of no other reason to explain why I’ve visited Wat Mahawan more than any other temple in Thailand. It is not a large temple, or a particularly ornate one. It does have a name – I know because I looked it up for this post. It has only a single chedi and the one it does have is weather beaten in a mold-stained white color instead of gleaming gold. You’d never know it but Wat Mahawan has two wiharn, and an ubosot – the bot is so small it is easily overlooked and one of the wiharn, also diminutive in size, is square in shape which is unique if not impressive. The main wiharn is what most visitors notice. If it wasn’t for the perimeter walls, that match the stupa in color and disrepair, you could see the entire temple from the street. Considering that I seldom run onto another human being when I visit the wat, I think that’s the option most people take.

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But location-wise Wat Mahawan rules. It is the closest temple to the Tha Pae Gate. Just down the street from Starbucks and McDonalds, not to mention a half dozen of the city’s more popular used bookstores, it is easily accessible to the hordes of touri who stay and play in the area. I usually stay in that neighborhood too, and patronize several businesses nearby. Which is my excuse for visiting the temple so often. It serves as a five minute rest stop, a quick excuse to snap a few shots before I get back to whatever it was I planned on doing that day.

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As many times as I’ve dropped in to Wat Mahawan, I’ve never seen the doors of the wiharn open. Nor have I ever seen a monk there. I have seen evidence of them, Wat Mahawan is the first place I took one of my naked monk shots – that’d be a photo of a robe sans its usual inhabitant. Once I ran across two workers messing with paving stones at the back corner of the grounds. But since that area has been unfinished during all the years I visited the wat that may have been the only day the laborers showed for work.

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Once you’ve walked the length of the wiharn and passed the chedi there is nothing to compel you to retrace your path using the opposite side of the wiharn; the open gate in the wall suggests you move along elsewhere instead. About two years ago when I was staying at a small inn tucked in between Tha Pae and Loi Kroh Roads, I entered the temple’s ground for the first time from its back entrance and finally saw what the opposite side of the wiharn looked like. Exactly like the side I’d been seeing all those years. But I did finally notice its ubosot, which looks like it belongs on top of a wedding cake. Well, a Burmese wedding cake. And there was a sign announcing the wat held a monk chat session on Friday mornings at 9am, the first I’d heard of the temple’s outreach program. Too bad they hold it at an hour when I’m still in bed or I could stop in and ask when they plan on finishing laying those paving stones.

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None of which sounds like much of a recommendation for you to visit Wat Mahawan. But it does have a few cool features. Plus the monk chat thingy if you get out of bed earlier than I. Around the base of the chedi are a pride of what I assume are Singha, though with the temple’s Burmese influence they may be Chinthes – up north they morph their mystical Buddhism creatures into forms that are often difficult to identify accurately. The chedi also has a few Yak around its base, and tucked into a recess on each of its sides are small creatures that remind me of the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. When the sun shines directly on the chedi it loses it look of neglect and gleams brightly. Even the Singha’s eye suddenly take on life, and you finally notice the stupa’s gold accents.

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Up front, across the driveway/parking lot is a small postage-stamp sized garden and cemetery where they’ve fitted a Buddha head into a ficus tree’s roots in hopes (I assume) that it will one day become as famous as the one in Ayutthaya. Maybe then more touri will take advantage of the wat’s proximity to where they hang out and will actually stop in to take a look. And maybe that will convince the monks to come out of hiding and open the wiharn’s doors occasionally.

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The wiharn itself is nicely carved and adorned with another large set of Singha – each of which have a paw wrapped around a little yak, or maybe it’s a munchkin – guarding its front doors. Caught at the right time of the day – what I call early morning, so around 10 or 11 – the whole facade takes on a green glow thanks to the metallic tiles set into the carved scenes of the Ramayana that cover the temple’s face in great detail.. Now that I think about it, small as it is, the entire wat may be the Chiang Mai Buddhist version of the Emerald City. No worries. Unless those paving stones they’ve been working on for years finally get laid and are yellow, it’s probably just a figment of my overactive imagination. Not that that explains those flying monkeys thingys.

And Toto too?

And Toto too?

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