This day was our only day in ChiangRai. So, we began with a trip up to Doi Tung Palace, which is where the King’s mother used to live. According to our guide, the entire mountain used to be poppy fields. However, the Queen decided to fix the problem by turning the whole place into her private villa and gardens, employing all the poppy planters as her gardeners instead. Let me just say that the photo doesn’t quite do it justice. The gardens are extremely impressive and well kept, even for tourist standards. I’ve been to some royal gardens in Europe and they don’t quite compare as the amounts and types of foliage are very different. We sorely lack this type of monarchs in Malaysia, who actually come up with real solutions to real problems.
After the tour around the gardens and palace, we drove off towards the Golden Triangle. It was at this point that I realised why there were so many roadblocks along the way – to check on drug smuggling. Although the photo looks like I had to sneakily take the shot, that was not the case at all. It’s merely because our driver drove very quickly through the roadblocks and I was seated right at the back of the minivan. So, I had a matter of seconds to compose the shot in a moving minivan. However, it turned out to be a rather ‘ominous’ kind of look, which is neat! Anyway, our tour guide kept telling us all kinds of legends about the Golden Triangle and the business that goes on there. It was all fun to listen to in anticipation of our journey there.
One of the first stops we made was at the Thai-Myanmar border. According to our guide, it is not worth crossing over to Myanmar because it would cost about 1000 baht per head and there wasn’t really much to do over on the other side. So, he brought us to a jade factory instead. Myanmar is currently flooding the world market with jade, which is the reason why the prices have gone down in recent years. So, we did not step into that country, which was not on our agenda anyway. Instead we decided to cross the Mekong into another country instead – Laos.
We took a boat ride down the Mekong river and were shown the reason why this place turned out to be a haven for the drug trade. The river is huge – it is the 3rd largest river in Asia. At this particular point, it forms the border between 3 countries – Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Our guide even showed us a little island within the central point of the river, that serves as an open market for drugs. The reason that enforcement is difficult is simply because it is too easy to escape. If the Thai police storm the little island, all the people need to do is run off towards Myanmar or Laos and vice versa. So, that is how drugs came to be openly traded on the river Mekong. I do not know how much of the story is true, but it is certainly logical and plausible.
Another interesting story at that particular junction in the river is the casinos. On the Myanmar side, there was a visible casino called ‘Win & Win Paradise’, which is opened by the Chinese from HongKong-Macau and on the Laos side, we could see another big casino complex under construction, which is being developed by the Chinese from PRC. I guess that the very reasons that attract the drug trade to this region, is also attracting the gambling businesses there. The casinos are being built right along the river and can be approached by boat. In case you did not know, this very same river flows all the way from southern China. So, I’m sure that there is an easy market for these casinos.
On our way back to ChiangMai, we stopped by this rather modern looking white temple just outside ChiangRai. It is at this point that I realised that ChiangMai is very Buddhist as random temples were strewn all over the streets. However, the situation is ChiangRai was quite different as there were a lot of churches all over. I think that it is because ChiangRai is a smaller place and according to our guide, a lot of missionaries went in there to help the people there. This made a lot of sense as even until today, Christian missionaries still flock to the third world and try their best to do some good in the poorest parts of the nation.
Sybreon Ones Nought 