Baan Dam, the Black House

Baan Dam was the home, studio and lifelong collection of Thawan Duchanee, a Thai painter who died in 2014, and it is nothing like the museum most itineraries pair it with. Around forty structures stand in a landscaped compound, most of them black timber in Lanna forms, some vast and barn-like, others small and shut. Inside are buffalo skulls arranged along dining tables the length of a bus, crocodile and snake skins stretched flat, chairs carved from single trunks, drums, shells and antlers. Very little is labelled and none of it is explained. Reactions split hard: some read it as a serious meditation on death and craft, others as a taxidermy warehouse with good architecture.

What you actually see

• The main hall - a long black room of skulls, hides and carved seating.
• The bone and horn collections - arranged as furniture and as ornament.
• The Lanna timber forms - traditional roof lines built at unusual scale.
• The pale outbuildings - a handful of white forms set against the black.

When to go

Mornings are quietest, before the coaches finish at the White Temple and work their way north. Two hours covers the compound at a walking pace. Opening hours shift with the season and the site can shut over the middle of the day, so check before making the trip out from town.

Honest expectations

There is almost no interpretation, so anyone wanting context leaves frustrated. The animal remains are everywhere and unsentimental, which some visitors find genuinely unpleasant. Photography is restricted inside several buildings, a number of them stay locked, and the site is far enough from Chiang Rai that you will want your own transport or a driver.

Nearby

Wat Rong Khun lies south of the city and the blue-walled Wat Rong Suea Ten is closer in.