Wat Si Suphan

Wat Si Suphan’s ordination hall is sheathed in hammered metal panels — aluminium and nickel on the weatherproofed exterior, pure silver at the sacred points inside — the only ubosot of its kind anywhere. Entry costs 50 THB, which includes a keyring and a bottle of water, and the temple sits on Wualai Road, two minutes’ walk from Chiang Mai’s South Gate, in the neighbourhood its own silversmiths built their trade around.

The temple dates to around 1500, founded under King Mueang Kaeo of the Mangrai dynasty and largely completed within a decade. Little from that original build survives — a handful of teak pillars and supports, now kept inside the newer assembly hall. In 2022 the compound’s old pagoda collapsed after heavy rain and revealed Buddhist relics packed inside it, a reminder that almost nothing standing here today is as old as the temple’s founding date suggests.

The silver ubosot is the newer addition, and it’s still being made. Wualai’s silversmith families have spent years hand-hammering and chasing the panels — repoussé work pushed out from behind, then refined from the front — into scenes from Buddhist cosmology and local folklore that wrap every outer wall. A small workshop behind the hall keeps producing panels, so parts of the building are visibly more finished than others depending on when you look.

Watch out: the ordination hall’s interior is closed to women, a restriction tied to this specific building under older Buddhist custom — it doesn’t apply to the rest of the temple grounds. The hall is compact, and its exterior reliefs cover much of the same ground as the inside, so little is actually missed from outside.

Insider Tip: Time a visit for Saturday evening. The temple stays open until around 21:30 that night instead of 17:30, and coloured floodlights hit the silver panels after dark — timed to overlap with the Wualai Walking Street market that fills the road outside from 17:00 to 22:00.

Dress modestly — covered shoulders and knees — and remove your shoes before stepping onto any raised hall floor. Wat Chedi Luang, about a kilometre north in the old city, makes an easy pairing if you’re spending the afternoon on temples rather than just the one stop.