Incense, flowers, and candles are the merit making trifecta at just about any Buddhist temple in Thailand. And any one of the three can make for a good photo when the play of shadows is right. That’s assuming you think taking pictures of candles is a worthy photographic subject . . . maybe next time I’ll get a picture of Chiang Mai’s second most important Buddha statue instead.

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Small, but colorful, Wat Panping doesn’t get lots of press but is worth a visit when in Chiang Mai.

Wat Panping in Chiang Mai is certainly not the smallest Thai temple that I’ve featured in a post. Nor is it the smallest wat I’ve visited, some others make a corner 7/11 look spacious in comparison. So it should merit being featured here in a full post; other temples not much larger in size have been, and have been worthy of a Bonus Shot post too. So it’s not a size queen’s disappointment in stature that earns the temple nothing more than a Bonus Shot post. It’s that there is so little information about the wat available. Which is surprising because it is one of the few wats that has installed a nice – appropriately-sized – plaque that explains the wat’s history as well as its architectural highlights and why they are deemed to be of interest. And then small that it may be, it was partially destroyed by a big fire a few years ago which made big news – so you’d think there would be greater interest in this cool little mini-wonderland of Thai temples. At least enough to flesh out a full article on the place. But there’s not.

Maybe it’s that Wat Panping sits directly across the street from Wat U-Mong (not the forest one), a much larger and more popular temple among the touri crowd; if you’re hitting numerous wats in Chiang Mai it’s easy for one to blur into another. I thought it might be that since Wat Panping is how it’s identified on the sign out front, but Wat Baan Ping is the name used on its explanatory plaque, that might cause some confusion and may be responsible for the dearth of information available on the ‘net. But that’s pretty standard practice for Thai temples. Some have close to a dozen alternate spellings of their name. Maybe it’s just one of those little jewels people want to keep to themselves; the temple’s visuals – a large gleaming golden chedi out front and several diminutive but vividly colored buildings leading inward – are enough to attract visitors so I have to assume a lot of folk have stopped by the wat. It’s just that few feel the need to write about it.

Dating back to the beginning of the Lanna period, remnants of the 535-year-old wat’s original chedi can be seen in the garden at the rear of the complex, a fact conveniently left off the temple’s explanatory plaque that instead points out in great detail the wat’s architectural highlights such as the two tangled Naga depicted on the door lintel of main wiharn, a not often seen deva arch at the right hand side of the wiharn’s stairs, and the 20 Chinese bricks salvaged from the original temple and used in constructing the new one in 1932. No mention is made of the 2003 electrical fire that destroyed 70% of the wiharn either. Google and Wat Panping seem to be in a competition to se which can provide the least amount of information about the temple. But maybe that’s a good thing. Discovering a cool little wat on your own is one of the treasures of visiting Chiang Mai. And despite knowing little about the temple and its history, it is its look and ambiance that really is the draw here anyway. So a short, photographic Bonus Post might just be the most appropriate way to feature Wat Panping on this blog after all.

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When you visit Chiang Rai’s famous white temple, Wat Rong Khun, you don’t expect to see the typical naga guarding the temple’s stairways. And architect/artist Chalermchai Kositpipat doesn’t disappoint. Elsewhere you know it’ll be naga, even when it is really markara or mom instead. That’s cool. I think I’ve got them down now. At least 90% of the time. Except for at Wat Lok Molee in Chiang Mai.

Out front of the wiharn there are naga. And a pair of mom show up at a smaller building off to the side of the compound. But out back of the wiharn they’ve gone with a motif I’ve yet to see in use at any other temple. A pair of snail shells, possibly stylized nautilus shells, flank the stairs there. There’s a smaller set hidden at a unused set of stairs on the building’s side too. That theme may or may not have a meaning. But rather than hunt it down I’m just gonna go with that the wat decided to screw with touri who thought they were now experts on the mythical creatures employed at Buddhist temples to decorate staircases.

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