Chiang Mai National Museum

This guide to the Chiang Mai National Museum follows a six-foot bronze Buddha head, found broken off at the neck in the dirt of an abandoned temple yard, once part of the largest cast bronze Buddha the Lanna kingdom ever made under King Tilokarat in the 1400s. It traces the two centuries of Burmese rule that left the temple abandoned and the statue's body lost, and the head's long detour through Bangkok before this museum opened in 1973. Listen for the Phra Singha style the sculptors used, still admired today.