Wat Jed Yod (Chiang Rai) Temple

Wat Jed Yod, also written Wat Jet Yot, sits a short way south of the city centre on the same road as Chiang Rai’s bars and nightlife. Like its namesake in Chiang Mai, it has a stupa topped with seven spires, though the Chiang Mai structure is far more evocative.

The temple is home to a massive, fully gilded bronze seated Buddha set in a lavishly decorated red-lacquered viharn with multicoloured painted teak pillars. Founded in 1844, it was granted third-grade royal temple status in 1978. The viharn’s exterior is as spectacular as its interior, richly carved and gilded, with two magnificent nagas guarding its steps, while the front veranda has a wooden ceiling bearing an unusual painted fresco of astrological design.

Its gleaming white stupa is modelled on that of the famous Chiang Mai temple of the same name, a national monument built to house the Eighth World Buddhist Council in 1477. Both draw on the seven-peaked design of the ancient Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya in India, traditionally held to be the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment (jed yod means “seven peaks” in Thai). A smaller hall of worship holds another finely crafted gilt-bronze Buddha backed by a stunning fully gilded shrine.