Chiang Rai hotels collection

Struck by lightning, a chedi in Chiang Rai cracked open on a stucco Buddha; the abbot saw the plaster flake from its nose, and green stone appear beneath. The statue, the Emerald Buddha, has long since left the town, and the monastery took its name, Wat Phra Kaew. On the edge of town, the painter Thawan Duchanee built the Black House, pavilions of dark wood furnished with buffalo horns, hides and bones. Down from the hills of Shan State, the Kok river skirts the northern edge of the town without lingering, and runs on to the Mekong.