The Golden Triangle

We spent one day while in Chiang Mai touring the Golden Triangle area of Thailand.  It was a long day but also very interesting.  We were picked up at our hotel by a nice air-conditioned minivan, with about ten other tourists.  We covered a lot of ground in one day and our driver drove like a madman (with no seat belts in the van!).  Our first spot was a hot spring where you could purchase eggs from local women who would then boil them for you in the hot pool.  We chose to soak our feet in a nearby eggless hot pool instead, a nice treat!  The next stop was The White Temple, which was built only 12 years ago.  It looks very fantastical, like something from a fairy tale.  We had to pass through images of hell before getting inside the temple to be with the Buddha.  The inside walls of the temple were painted with images from modern culture, from batman to avatar, to the twin towers, to superman.  It felt a little bit like we were at Disneyland or somewhere similar.

The fantastical White Temple

Our next stop was the Golden Triangle.  This is an area where Thailand borders both Myanmar (Burma) and Laos.  There are two rivers that separate the countries:  the Mekong and the Ruak Rivers.  During the sixties and seventies half of the world’s supply of opium was grown in this area of northern Thailand, as the climate is ideal for this crop.  During the Vietnam War and the fight against communism in Asia, the CIA encouraged its growth.  Eventually the King of Thailand used his influence to encourage the Thai army to squelch the opium production.  Nowadays, at least on the Thai side, more benign crops are grown, such as vegetables, flowers and fruit.   In Myanmar opium production is still going strong.  There is a small island in the Mekong that our tour guide said is a “no man’s land” – it doesn’t belong to any country.  It looked deserted during our trip, but long ago a person could buy opium there.  Because it didn’t belong to any country, they only took payment in gold.  Hence the name, Golden Triangle.

Snake whiskey with a Beer Lao chaser!

We took a boat ride on the Mekong up the river to see Myanmar and down the river to see Laos.  We were interested to learn that we were only about 150 miles from China (had never been so close to China before!).  Both Myanmar and Laos had a large casino on their shores, both funded heavily by the Chinese - Chinese folks like to come down there to vacation.  Our boat stopped at a small tourist village in Laos, where we were able to spend about an hour.  We were immediately met at the dock by small children all reciting the same thing:  “five baht, five baht” with their hands held out.  It was nice to see that not one tourist gave anything to the children (hopefully the parents will stop using their children this way).  The big draw was the whiskeys in large glass vats.  Each whiskey had one item floating in it, where it derived its name:  snake whiskey, armadillo whiskey, scorpion whiskey, and the ultimate tiger penis whiskey.  I think Daron tried them all - he said none of them tasted great, but they left a warm feeling in his stomach (which may have been the onset of nausea!).

Girl from Long Neck tribe

Next on the agenda was a Hill Tribe village, which Daron and I were both really looking forward to seeing.  It was mostly a touristy zoo!  There were at least three different tribes represented in the village, and I think they actually did live there, although all we saw were various stalls where they sold textiles, some made by them and some not. We got to see many of them in their traditional clothing, and even hard at work weaving, although it had the feel of a high pressure sales event – with one lady even calling out to us as our group was leaving, “please buy something, please buy something!”  It was interesting to learn about them from our tour guide, even if the village wasn’t completely authentic, and many people (including us) did make purchases to support their village. 

After this it was a three hour drive back to Chiang Mai, even with our speedster driver.  We were tired after such a full day and happy when we got back to our hotel room (safely!).