Wat Rong Khun, located in Northern Thailand outside Chiang Rai, is unlike any other temple in Thailand in both design and history. Also known as The White Temple, Wat Rong Khun is a contemporary Buddhist temple that just began construction in 1996 and is still not completed*. Thai painter-turned-architect Chalermchai Kositpipat designed the temple with the intention of creating an elegant appearance to honor Buddha’s purity. His original intention was to make it shine and sparkle in the sunlight, but Kositpipat ultimately designed the White Temple to specially be viewed in moonlight when it looks distinctly like a ghostly otherworldly apparition straight out of a Thai version of Tolkien.