Wat Phantao

Jason Phang

3 months ago

Beautiful temple! AND ALSO: one of the best mango sticky rice we've had here! The lady sets up her cart right by the entrance to the left. We were here 6 months apart and the standard is still good!

John W

in the last week

Fabulous! And withall the splendour you might expect of a former royal temple and burial ground.

Jennyvine Jumagdao

a week ago

Although it is one of the most important temples in Chiang Mai, it is rather a simple temple made of woods and can be skipped

MAHMOUD MOHAMMAD

in the last week

Nice old temples in old chang mai city

Vitor Nascimento

4 months ago

It is a somewhat of an interesting temple, mostly because it has a view point of Chiang Mai and it has a very pretty golden structure and some jade figures of Buddha. The reasons I give two stars are the following : First it is difficult to go up: You either get a tour, a taxi/grab or rent a taxi for a couple of hours (all somewhat expensive). Or, you go on a red car which only departs from two places(university or north gate) and have to wait until the car is full. Red car was 60baht from north gate, but as we waited half hour and there were only 5 in the car we all agreed to pay 200 both ways per person to just go there. The way up is very... Curvy and people may get car sick. If your red car is an old one, you will also get lung cancer from all the smoke. As you arrive, you can either go up the stairs or take the elevator (we took stairs). There will be some cute children on the stairs trying to get pictures with you (paid, naturally) and from the beginning of the stairs you start to see the donation boxes everywhere, for every single reason (the temple, the reconstruction of the temple, for the blind, the dogs, the cats, etc...) As you get up, you can either pay or not (I think it was 30baht) as there was no control whatsoever. The view could be nice, however Chiang Mai is not the prettiest city from above. You can however see the way the city develops from the square and the airport which seemed interesting. As you go inside the temple, there are multiple signs to respect the temple and to be silent, however all the thais fighting to charge you 500baht for a picturewith the golden structure and all the Chinese being loud, there is absolutely no silence neither any respect towards the temple. All things considered, I don't really believe it is a must see in Chiang Mai and would rather leave it for last in the to-do list. I would rather spend my time on the weekend markets (even though they all sell the same stuff) trying out the food or going to elephant sanctuary/tiger kingdom or even to any of the Temples in the old city. Maybe worth it, if you spend more time around and visit the surrounding area. The best thing from the trip was the drinks we had at departure, 20 baht for very very nice passion fruit juices in bottles.