Into the Golden Triangle

Fortunately, the journey to Chiang Rai was a lot easier than the road to Chiang Mai a month ago.

Despite enjoying my trip on a local bus to Lamphun, we opted for a luxury bus to Chiang Mai's little northern sister. Well, it's a long ride and we're not masochists. For once, 'luxury' was not an ambitious overstatement, for this bus was indeed luxurious.

Wide leather seats, lots of leg room, air-con and free drinks and snacks. You have to enjoy a little luxury occasionally.

The bus travelled through the northern Thai countryside, showing us plenty of jungle, rolling hills, pretty villages and picturesque rivers – in fact, as we crossed over one river we were lucky enough to spot a water snake racing from one bank to another.



Once in Chiang Mai, we grabbed a room at the Baan Bua guest house. Simple, clean, friendly and central – about all you can expect for 250 baht. Although I wouldn't mind a free explanation of the odd smell that haunts our bathroom at night.

Chang Rai turned out to be everything we expected, which was not much. Chiang Mai's provincial little sister about sums it up. Nothing wrong with that, but we could find little reason to hang around – and we certainly looked for a few.

But then most people don't come here for the city, they come here for the surrounding region. We're not most people – we're here because it's a necessary stop on the way to Laos before our visas run out on September the 1st – but, hey, when in Rome.

So we booked ourselves on a tour of the notorious Golden Triangle for today. Sound intrepid? To be honest, it's not – it's on the itinerary of every tourist who visits Chiang Rai. But that's for a good reason, it's an interesting tour.

So this morning, our guide Jimmy showed up to collect us. Turned out we got lucky – no one else had opted to do the same tour, so we had the car and a guide all to ourselves. And we're twice lucky: Jimmy was funny and fun, helpful and informative.

Our first stop was Mae Salong, a mountain towering high above the region here – 1,300 metres to be exact. By the time we got to the top our heads were already feeling a little light and our ears were popping.

The mountain is beautiful – lush and green, peppered with pretty little villages and occupied almost entirely by ethnic Chinese. It all seems so safe and innocent – and it is – but just 20 years ago, it was one of the most dangerous places in Asia.

For this mountain is where one sizeable left-over of the Chinese Nationalists sheltered after Mao's Communists won their titanic battle for control of their country. Since they loathed the Communists, they were cautiously welcomed by the Thais - who were getting a little concerned about some of their neighbours' interest in Communism.

But the Nationalists needed money to keep up their fight against Communism and turned to opium cultivation to make it. By the time the Vietnam War ended and Communism didn't seem quite the threat it was, heroin production in the area was out of control.

Eventually, the authorities persuaded the locals to replace opium with something far more innocent (although equally addictive, if you happen to be English): tea.

And that solution seems to have sorted out the problem convincingly, at least in Mae Salong. Just goes to show the truth in that old adage: a good cup of tea solves everything.



Anyway, enough of the history lesson. After driving past and through endless tea plantations, Jimmy pulled up at one of the many, many teashops on the roadside. We got out and a lovely Chinese lady beckoned us to sit down for an elaborate tea ceremony.

The woman spoke Mandarin as a first language, not Thai, so I finally got an opportunity to use the two expressions in the language that I have always remembered being taught by Mum when I was little. I don't think my attempts at saying 'hello, how are you?' and 'thank you' were too impressive, but they went down well – so thanks Mum!

As part of the tea ceremony, we got some snacks, mainly dried and candied fruit and toasted, salted grubs. Did I say grubs? Yes, I said grubs. If you want to know more about me and grubs, check out Amanda's blog. But let me tell you, I ate them and, yes, I loved them and I would eat them again.



We moved on from there to a tea plantation, but there was little more to enjoy there than the amazing view. Nothing was going on except the staff clowning about. But we got to see a bit of how tea is produced and it sure looks like bloody hard work. I felt like I needed a cuppa just to get over the explanation.

Then it was back down the mountain and on to a place called Mae Sae, Thailand's most northerly town. Jimmy took us to a temple atop a hill overlooking the town to take in the view. It was nothing particularly remarkable, just a Thai market town built around a river, which cut through the middle of it.

Nothing remarkable except that the river was an international border: one half of the town is in Thailand, the other half is in Burma. Everything looks normal at first glance, but when you look closely you can see a bridge over the river with no vehicles, just lots of people carrying luggage, and a checkpoint at either side. And Burma is so close, you feel you can reach out and touch it.

In this picture, the top half above the river is Burma and the bottom half below the river is Thailand.



Now the idea on these one-day tours is to pay $US10 for a Burmese visa and cross that bridge yourself. 'Hey everyone, I went to Burma for an hour'. Well, we would have enjoyed that as much as anyone else does, but we couldn't bring ourselves to do it. It's not going to Burma for an hour that we had a problem with – that would have been fun – it's giving their monstrous regime 10 bucks.

I'm sure the Burmese government isn't going to miss our cash but, without getting on a high horse about it, we just felt it was wrong to give them anything. So we stayed on the Thai side and just looked at Burma.

After we'd had a good old stare, it was off to 'the Golden Triangle'. Of course, we've been in what everyone else in the world would call the Golden Triangle for some time. But someone bright at the Thailand tourist board must have come up with a great idea – find the spot where you can see three countries at once, put up a sign saying 'Golden Triangle' and watch the foreigners flock to have cheesy photos taken in front of it.



And flock to it we did. Fortunately, it's actually a pretty good sight. We were driven to a look-out on the top of a hill, to a place where you're in Thailand but Burma is on the left and Laos is on the right.

But never mind what's to the left or the right, it's what's slap bang in the centre that makes this sight so amazing: the mighty Mekong river.

What a river. I had been looking forward all day to seeing it for the very first time and I wasn't disappointed. It's without a doubt the most impressive river I have ever seen. It's absolutely enormous.



That was the last stop of the day, and it left Amanda and I panting for more Mekong. Fortunately, we'll be getting it tomorrow, when we're heading off to Chiang Kong – a town on the Mekong from which you cross into Laos.

It takes about as long to get there as it did to get here from Chiang Rai. But this time, there's no luxury bus.