Thur 19th Feb – Doi Mae Salong to Chiang Rai
DW: All good trips need a central premise to be built around. This gives vision and enables the trip to be properly scoped and avoid becoming a series of rapid transits between “must-see locations”. The core focus of this trip is the northern Mekong and surrounding regions.
Today is Day 2 of our driver-enabled sub-trip, we saw the Mekong for the first time.
Tomorrow we depart on our 3 day hike (the replacement for our Laotian one). We expect all three days to be wrapped up into a single post on our return.
DW: Stay tuned for Neil Perry to plunder another culture and open a new Eastern Suburbs brunch place after seeing this spread.
CR: The only other party at this hotel was a German couple staying in the villa pictured. We were told on check in that breakfast would be at 8am and delivered to the room. Every five minutes from 8am onwards one of the couple would frantically open the door and check if breakfast had been silently delivered. Breakfast arrives after 8.30am. This German couple clearly haven’t adjusted to Thai Time yet.
CR: We were asked in the opening video projection (which hadn’t changed since the operation had opened in the 80s) to take time at the end of the museum to reflect on the impact of drugs. I did that at the end. I do believe ultimately that drugs are bad. But drugs can open up experiences and perceptions not available to us in every day life and shouldn’t be instantly discredited because they are not the social norm. Therefore the best that society can do is educate. From there people will always make their own choices. Opium was only made illegal about 70 years ago in Thailand, having previously swung from illegal to legal in cycles. It made me question what is legal now that will be indisputably illegal in another 70 years. Declan skipped reflection time he was working to a timetable and we were lagging behind.
CR: Photo for mum of our cheese roti becoming cheese roti.
Favourite photo: all of them 🤣 what a great post. Loved the one of the Golden Triangle it is such a prohibited and exotic location cant believe you are there. The meeting of the rivers blows my mind. Old temples are certainly old there – thats crazy. I will ignore the ambivalence to tea and hope your future is filled with better smelling booties, hot melty roti and less corn with your croissants xx
The Golden Triangle in Thailand is now pretty tame. There hasn’t been any opium growing for a while now and there are a fair few tourist groups going through.
The Laos side of the border at that spot is weirder now. It is a Chinese Special Economic Zone which basically means they have dodgy real estate and a casino for Chinese nationals to launder money through. There is this massive weird building that is the casino hotel you can see. We won’t be visiting there on our Laos trip.
We were told today narcotics trade happens further up the border now between Myanmar and Thailand. Good knowledge.
Being more than 50% German I feel it’s appropriate for me to say that order and punctuality are traits highly regarded in their culture. Breakfast being late would have thrown them off balance for the rest of the day.
Must admit I had to look twice to work out what was happening in the photo of Declan balancing the water can. Very well framed. Was there a reason for this art piece being there.
I’m not sure if I would have trusted the structural integrity of the swing. Did you have a go?
Great photo of the Mekong and the three countries. So many different cultures and traditions separated by so little space.
I completely understand why local farmers grow drug crops. From what I understand those crops are much easier to grow and less susceptible to pests than other acceptable crops. They also grow well in that environment and earn them a higher return for effort than normal crops. All very important for families trying to support themselves in difficult circumstances.
The old temple is stunning. Just about nothing built in the last 100 years will still be around for that length of time.
Dad: I think that the coffee art piece was installed by the cafe to get people to stop at it. It worked for us! It was good having the private driver as we could pretty much just stop when we wanted.
I had a very tentative go at the swing. I also did not trust it.
The Hall of Opium was interesting in that regard about the growing of drugs, dad. In particular it was interesting that for decades it was a valid profession. At one point taxes on opium made up 20% of government revenue! Thailand only seemed to outlaw it after decades of global pressure in the twentieth century.
I am glad you liked the old temple photo. It was also very interesting because it was out of the way for tourists so there was only a few tourists there and a few monks. It’s just in the middle of a modern town and there are also old fortifications around the town too. Very cool that the past and the present sit so closely together. One is not segmented off from the other.
I like to think 8 Amber Close will still be around in 100 years.
I loved ur perspective here, It’s wild to me that people are still rotting in prison for things that aren’t even crimes anymore, while high-level criminals walk free for far worse. It feels like a massive double standard. I really hope we stop criminalizing the things that actually open the mind… whether that’s exploring new perspectives or even just the trippy, expansive energy of something like the Opalite music video