The White Temple and the Black House

This morning I set an alarm for 9am ad slept right through it as I forgot to put the sound on. We eventually got up around ten and headed off around 11 to the bus station, via Boots (to restock after yesterday's moisturiser incident) and 7-11. When we arrived we saw the blue bus we needed just leaving so we had to wait half an hour for the next one. We waited on the bus. It was just a local bus, no fancy minibus with aircon, shutting doors ad seatbelts. We set off around 12 and had to stop half way up the road for petrol. It wasn't a particularly busy bus. There were a couple of Thai people and one girl from Switzerland we chatted a little to as we got off. We arrived at 12:35 and the journey cost us 20 baht. That's about 50p. It was quite different from and English stagecoach bus, but we noticed the bus drivers still do the little wave when they pass another bus.

The bus dropped us off about 20 metres from the White Temple and the conductor kindly told us where to wait for the return bus and the times. We wandered over to the temple, took some photos from the outside and then bought tickets and rented some coverings for our legs before going in. I will leave you to work out from the photos why it is called the White Temple. It had a pretty interesting design, where the front gateway onto the path up to the entrance to the temple was designed to look like hell,  whereas the temple symbolised heaven. We wandered around and into the temple. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside but we took many outside. It was a unique temple and quite beautiful. The setting, with the grass and a little pond also made for a beautiful place. You wouldn't have known it was just on the side of the road.  

After looking round the temple we got a drink and waited for the next bus back. 

We had to wait at the side of the main road for the bus and just flag it down as it came past. It wasn't an official bus stop. We ended up waiting with the Swiss girl we were chatting to before. The journey back only took 15 minutes.  When we got back to the bus station we sat on a bench and discussed what to do next. We decided to go to the Black House (clue in the blogpost title).

We had to get the green bus to the Black House and we were told it was leaving in ten minutes, at 2:45. We sat on the boiling bus sweating for 20 minutes before it actually left. This bus was much more cramped than the previous blue ones. An elderly couple got on and I gave up my seat for the elderly gentleman. Karma then helped me out and a woman moved her sprog onto her lap so I could sit. There were people standing all over the show, even in the open doorways. One wrong move and they'd be out.

We arrived at our stop at 15:35 and walked 800m down a little road to the Black House. I was so hot and sweaty and seriously lagging in energy by this point.  We paid the entrance fee and went in. The Black House is actually a collection of 40 buildings (of which the majority were black) and artifacts that belonged to a Thai artist Thawan Duchanee before he died in 2014. It was very weird. We wandered round some of the houses looking at the animal skulls and crocodile hides. He was actually awarded prizes for some of his work. I think he did some painting but we didn't see many. We were done by 4:15. It was too hot and wasn't really either of our cups of tea. We got a drink and then walked the 800m back to the main road to wait for the bus, again at the side of the main road. Again we ended up waiting with the Swiss girl from earlier.

It was very hot and we seemed to be waiting for ages. It was sheer relief when the bus eventually turned up. One kind lady had pulled over to see if she could give us a lift but she wasn't heading in the same direction. She had seen us waiting when she pulled into the nearby shop ad obviously felt sorry for us when we were still there as she left, with car after car whizzing past. We actually ended up only waiting 20 minutes but it felt like an hour.

When we got back to the bus station we walked back to the road in front of the hostel and found some food as I was starving. It was so good to sit down and be in the cool air. Lauren had chicken wings and rice and I had fried rice and vegetable spring rolls. I really like the fried rice they do out here. Then we wandered back to the hostel. It was around half 6 by this time. I skyped with mum and then Lauren and I played pool, before relaxing in our beds.