The Golden Triangle

Since Songkran, the Thai New Year celebrations were raging at its height with more and more violent water games, we desperately wanted to get out of Chiang Mai in the hope that the countryside will be more peaceful. On the 15th of April we decided to sneak out of town on 2 Honda Phantom motorbikes to spend the following eight days riding around the Northern mountains, the area called the Golden Triangle, a journey of over 700km. Our hopes were soon let down, big time; we could not even cross the road before getting completely wet. It seems bicycle and motorbike riders were the number one target for the biggest hits with full bucket of water splashed over your face, while riding and obviously not being in the position to defend yourself or get off the bike every 3 minutes to make yourself heard. Anyway, it would not have made any difference, we were already soaking wet and you ought to feel special and lucky being chosen as a target, replying with a smile and happy new year wishes. I have to admit silently that I lost my sense of humor after the third violent stroke of bucket flying full speed to hit me frontally and I was very happy to arrive to our first destination, near Doi Saket, visiting our Dutch lady friend's home. I think it has been 4 months since we have not had the luxury to stay in a HOME, with home made food and all its beautiful belongings. And the Northern Thai countryside was a different experience, too, with its rice fields, forests and windy roads.

Our next destination was Jaeson National Park, which is famous of waterfalls and hot springs. We decided to stay overnight at the nearby of the park at a lovely bungalow and walk around the park before sunset. However neatly the hot springs were organized it was not an attraction to sink in them when we have been dropping sweat all the day because of the heat and humidity. We anyway did not quite feel being boiled next to the eggs locals placed nicely in small baskets in the water, which took 17 minutes to be hard boiled eggs for the pick-nick.

I just cannot stop myself mentioning that while I am writing this post there are two Thai kids sitting next to me in the internet cafe about the age of 5, a girl and a boy in full excitement crazy about playing games on the computer. They are so small that they hardly reach the keyboard and their legs are hanging in mid air from the chair. They are really sweet, amazing!!!

Anyway, back to our adventures, the next station was really in the middle of the wilderness, off the main road to Chiang Rai, 25 km to the mountains to the Akha Hill Tribe villages. When after a good hour of fighting our way uphill on dirt roads we arrived to our destination we realized that we are so much off the beaten trek that we are not able to make ourselves understood unless we speak Thai. So I opened our guidebook which contains some life saving expressions like food and accommodation with Latin transliteration and to my greatest surprise it worked. It worked actually so well, that we got a small house for free, which I guess was held for guests, as there were no guest houses or other means of accommodation. Soon we became the attraction of the village when we were shown to the little store on the main street (the only street of the village) for stuffing our bellies with a good noodle soup. I guess the owners were making their record sales with some weird jelly-like sweets sold in tiny plastic bags with ice, which was the excuse for villagers to come close enough to see us from the corner of their eyes. This shyness is quite a different experience from India... Finally we did not see the Akha tribes, because though there was a horse, but not in a condition to ride on it, so we called it a day dedicated ourselves to our reading and an early bedtime with ants, spiders and all sorts of bugs.

Next morning we headed to Chiang Rai, a small, very easy going town with excellent street food vendors and night market, from where it is ideal to discover the border mountains of Thailand. We started with Mae Sai, the most Northern point of Thailand, where through the Mae Nam Sai river you can cross the border to Burma, Myanmar and buy almost everything on the street from chestnuts to fake brand wrist watches and opium pipes. To speed up our journey after a lunch and a walk on the street market we continued to Sop Ruak, The Golden Triangle, where the Thai, Myanmar and Laos borders meet. Though the name Golden Triangle does not have too much to do with the borders themselves, much more with World's largest opium production in the mountains of these three countries, Thais managed to turn this place into a tourist attraction and push out most of the opium business to the neighboring countries. If you have questions about the unconditional respect the Thai King enjoys, visit The Hall of Opium; there are still good kings, who are very active in improving the living standards of the ones most in need with very smart and advanced ideas. Like in this region besides the governments' merciless war against drugs the Royal family initiated projects to provide alternative earning possibilities to the hill tribes for living, mostly in the field of agriculture and rehabilitation.

We decided to spend the night at Chiang Saen along the Mekong River, over which river the bridge was build and Coppola directed the film Apocalypse Now. Today the place looks much more cheerful and peaceful, but it is not difficult to imagine the times when warlords went nuts in the jungle creating their own cult on the ruins of ancient temples.

The next day we made a longer stretch to Mae Salong, the little China on excellent mountain roads with a lot of opportunities to practice our cornering technique and enjoy the scenery. Mae Salong is a lovely hill top town with mostly Chinese inhabitants, dealing with tea production and selling all kinds of Chinese goodies. Our guest house provided us with a hand made map about the surrounding places to visit and so we got excited to go on a bit of an off road drive again to see some hill tribes and temples. The experiment proved to be to toughest riding exercise on rain washed dirt roads with rocks and steep up and down hill stretches. Hmmm, we survived, but I guess there are more pleasant way of acquiring the liking of riding the bike. After recovering from the shock we headed to Chiang Dao, which is famous of its caves. Just not to make things easy we took a guide for an excursion, which turned out to be not illuminated, leading through passages where you had to climb in pitch dark on all four and the only hope we had was a with a small kerosene lamp in the hand of our female non-English speaking guide, who was very kindly smiling all the way. We were relieved when we saw the sunlight again and agreed that for the time being we do not further experiment Thailand; we return back to Chiang Mai and make our way towards Laos.