VACATIONS FROM HOME: CHIANG RAI AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

Monday, April 28, 2025

CHIANG RAI AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

PUTTING A FACE TO A NAME

Golden Triangle
Buddha
The “Discover Thailand” tour we took with Overseas Adventure Travels brought us from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, with several stops in between, and then finally Chiang Rai.

The small city was a sleepy version of Chiang Mai. The streets were similarly lined with massage parlors and eateries, both local and western, and bars and like Chiang Mai there was a night market. There were two stages in two different locales. One had someone playing a guitar and singing, that was off to one side. This section was more formal and was tree-lined with tables serviced by restaurants surrounding the little square.

Then there was the main area, lined with eateries of all sorts of Thai foods like mango and sticky rice and seafoods and everything in between with tables filling the center. At one end there was a stage where there was traditional music and apsara dancers.

Chiang Rai Night Market

In this section of the night market all the restaurants were all self-serves. You order your food and then find a table. Everywhere there were kiosks selling everything from art to clothing. There were a lot of westerners milling about.

We had ample time to walk through the market and get something to eat, but OAT used the town as a jumping off point for our last side trip of the tour.

DOI TUNG AND THE PRINCESS MOTHER

From the mountain top of Doi Tung you can see Burma and Laos and it was here where Princess Srinagarindra stared down the opium drug lords of the Golden Triangle and helped to push Thailand into a sustainable economy featuring cash crops and aiding the once overlooked hill tribe people.

Doi Tung Villa of
Princess Srinagarindra

She is revered. The hill tribe people call her Mae Fah Luang or “The Royal Mother from the Sky”. It is a proper moniker as her efforts in not only pushing for sustainable cash crops, but also education, social welfare and public health and environmental conservation have aided Thailand immensely, and her Royal Villa at Doi Tung and the surrounding grounds are now a tourist attraction. We took a self-guided audio tour, after first removing our shoes, as is the Thai custom and learned how she helped the country. If you visit, make sure to get a coffee at the Doi Tung coffee shop. Through the efforts of the Princess Arabica coffee and macadamia nuts were part of the cash-crops used to replace the opium trade that had gripped the area for decades.

DOI TUNG COFFEE

THE GOLDEN BUDDHA AND THE HOUSE OF OPIUM

In 1971 at a press conference regarding the proliferation of opium coming from the southeast Asian countries of Burma, Laos and Thailand, a US State Department official referred to the area as the Golden Triangle. The name stuck and though the “golden triangle” covers a large area between the three countries it is possible to “see” the triangle at the confluence of the Mekong and Ruak Rivers in the town of Ban Sop Ruak in Thailand. This is where Burma (Myanmar) and Laos and Thailand abut. There are several monuments there along the plaza of this ominous area as well as a massive Golden Buddha statue.

The Golden Triangle
Left to right: Thailand, Burma, Laos

Just seeing three countries in such proximity is breathtaking. Leisure and working boats ply the river with the hotels and casinos on the Laotian side rise dramatically while the finger of land separating Thailand from Burma (Myanmar) snakes to a point where the silt choked waters of the Ruak slowly mix with the clearer water of the Mekong that flows all the way through Cambodia and Vietnam and into the Mekong Delta before meeting the South China Sea.

Map of Golden Triangle

Given the infamous history of the Golden Triangle it may be difficult for some to fully appreciate the beauty of this point.

As a reminder of the history OAT had us visit the House of Opium, a private museum a short walk from the point. There we learned about opium cultivation and how the workers extracted the sap from the poppy plants for opium. Also included in the tour was a collection of the special cutting tools used to scour the opium and the ornate weights used in the commerce of this illicit trade.

Afterwards we boarded colorful trucks that had to be hand-cranked to start and we chortled up into the hills for a lunch.

Thanks for reading.

Love Janet and greg