The Story of O

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The third new year in four months seen off in grand style, we feel we have acquired enough good karma to explore Asia's murkier side and start off the much anticipated expedition to the Golden Triangle, a wide swathe of northern Southeast Asia comprising remote parts of Burma, Laos and Thailand. A savage region of rugged mountains and inaccessible forests inhabited by Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lisu, Shan, Tai Lu and a few other hilltribes. Imagine warlords with private armies, megalomanic Burmese generals, opium mule trains chugging through the jungle, hidden opium refineries, Chinese triads, remote villages and above all the chest-high pink and white poppies that are the source of opium and numerous opiates deriving from it: codeine, morphine, heroin, just to mention a few. Add in the mix secret wars waged by CIA and financed by heroine smuggling by the same very agency using their own airline Air America and the decades of disinformation and you will start to get the idea that this is the place not to be missed from our Southeast Asia tour under any circumstances.

The provincial town of Chiang Rai is our starting point to the heart of the darkness. Chiang Rai is basically a smaller and much more relaxed version of Chiang Mai. We spend a couple of days there, visiting two rather exceptional temples and learning about the various hilltribes at a local museum, which also provides us with an introductory course in the historical usage of opium. Academically speaking, we are very satisfied customers. We stay at a guesthouse run by tribal people and get our first flavor of their fierce cuisine Our guesthouse resides by a river called Mae Kok, (pronounced Mi Kok), for being a great appreciator of infantile humour such as Benny Hill Show, I cannot stop cracking cheap jokes about the name. Mighty Mae Kok, me love you long time.

The first temple at Chiang Rai we visit is called the White Temple, which has a very contemporary take on traditional wats. At the entrance to the temple we are confronted by the 500 sculptured concrete hands that rise beneath the bridge, seemingly seeking emancipation from a bottomless pit, creating an arresting image of anguish and desperation. Perhaps they are meant to represent the lost souls of the opium addicts. The temple is quite astonishing from inside as well, there are the usual large mural paintings of Buddha, but when you look at them more carefully, you begin to spot some unusual Buddhist deities such as Batman, some characters from Matrix and Star Wars and the twin towers in flames. Not that we are experts on wats, although we have seen a great deal of them in the last six months, this temple is by far the most surreal one we have been to. If the intricate White temple was the proverbial Heaven on earth, then our next stop the Black House is the proverbial Abyss. A compound of 40 black buildings built using varying architectural styles from Balinese to Japanese. All the buildings are decorated with a collection of animal bones, skins and skulls evoking a somewhat sinister atmosphere, except the lavatory that has been decorated with an impressive array of wooden dildos.

After Chiang Rai we get off the beaten path, beginning with Chiang Saen, a somnolent riverside town, from where we can see Laos across the river. We rent a scooter and head north to Sop Ruak, which for tourist herds is sold as the Golden Triangle experience and might just be the largest tourist trap in northern Thailand. Sop Ruak is at the confluence of Mekong and Nam Ruak rivers, where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet. Hence you could argue that you are in the middle of the Golden Triangle, although you cannot escape from a feeling that the whole place has been recently built to cash in on the reputation of the Golden Triangle of the past. Having said that, it seems the tourism business in this particular village must be as profitable as the opium trade used to be, because in this small village we spot a Porsche Cayenne for the first time in Thailand. Sop Ruak is not a complete waste of time though, there is an excellent Thai government managed museum, fully dedicated to opium, promptly named the Hall of Opium, where we get so intrigued by the fascinating history of opium that we miss the closing time and have to be kicked out by the friendly staff.

To get the big picture of the Golden Triangle, you have to understand the colonial history of the area. To save your precious time, here's my brief but illustrative summary for you. From the mid 1700's until the early 1800's Great Britain had a trade surplus with all its trading partners except with China. Obviously, this was not making Her Royal Highness very happy and something had to be done about it. Since Britain had the most powerful fleet in the world and they were already excelling in the slave trade, why not becoming the world's leading narcotic dealer as well. Growing cheap opium in India and shipping it off into China - where it was sold in rather forceful fashion - was a phenomenal success and took care of the trade deficit so effectively that the Chinese were soon spending more on opium than their treasury was collecting in taxes. The recreational use of opium became endemically popular in China, perhaps due to the drug's enhancing effects on meditation and its introverted qualities agreeing with the Chinese psyche. Obviously, the Chinese Court got alarmed and wanted to end the spreading of addiction, which was quite understandable, given that 30 million people of total population of 400 million had become opium addicts and the number was increasing by an hour. As a drastic measure to put an end to the corrosion of the Chinese society and save their economy, the opium was outlawed overnight by the authorities and some English owned opium cargoes were seized and burned. The measured response of Great Britain - support Chinese efforts to bring the drug epidemic under control, hell no, instead Great Britain declared a war, showed off some military muscle, burned a few cities, grabbed Hong Kong as spoils of wars and forced the Chinese to keep the opium legal. The Chinese did not learn the lesson at once, and tried a few decades later banning opium again, resulting the Brits declaring yet another war with the same tragic outcome to China. It must have been great to be a Victorian Brit and be able to say with proud patriotism: my country goes to a war to keep the good shit legalized.

The French not wanting to miss a piece of lucrative narcotic action, but since lacking the naval power of Great Britain, adopted another strategy. Thus began a mass cultivation of opium in the French Indochina, wherefrom it was transported to China via the ancient silk roads. Two great colonial powers feeding the mighty dragon of China enough dope to keep it dormant for while but not for ever as the dragon is now wide awake andhas alredy sent the Brits packing from Hong Kong. China is beoming de facto world power of the new millenium, ironically the Western powers in their greed played a significant role in this process as Mao Tse-Tsung himself pointed out that the Opium wars were the beginning of the Chinese revolution.

The history class's over, let's take you now to Laos. We cross the border at Chiang Khong, but not before taking a rare opportunity to taste one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, the giant Mekong cat fish, that can weight more than 300 kg and be 3 meters in lenght. The fish is nowadays very endangered due to overfishing and too many Chinese hydropower projects and thus the fishing season is limited to only to one month and only in Chiang Khong region. We have the fish served with garlic and lime, the fish has a meaty but yet surprisingly mild flavour. A delicious treat that will probably be not available in foreseeable future.

We enter the people's democratic republic of Laos by a longtail boat, pay for the visas to bored looking border officials and head north to Luang Nam Than, basically going to an opposite direction to the main tourist flow, which suits us just fine. We celebrate my birthday in Luang Nam Than, where we have a much missed treat - a sauna! A herbal sauna followed by a Laotian massage and for time being we are in the seventh heaven. The birthday celebrated, we continue venturing deeper into the Golden Triangle. Since we want to be fully independent, not relying on any tour agency, renting a motocross bike is the only viable option to explore the remote tribal villages, which are not accessible by a car. Not having a motorcycle license does not pose any problem, an hour spent on the winding unpaved roads of Laos provides an excellent school to learn to ride a bike. With a proper beast under us, off we ride to Muang Sing, which once used to be the biggest opium market in the Golden Triangle. Muang Sing itself produced about five tons of opium per year. Since Laotian government took more harsh approach towards opium trade in 2000, the trade has gone underground and the opium dens take some effort to be found. Scroring some opium is still easier though than procuring a decent bottle of wine in Asia, as we are discreetly approached in a few occasions. What makes Muang Sing really fascinating place is the melange of ethnic groups who come to trade there every morning, the morning market is something really worth seeing. Muang Sing as a base we spend a couple of days exploring the surrounding tribal villages as well as visiting the Chinese border, almost accidentally crossing it. We offer an elder Akha woman ride to her village and get invited to have tea with her extended family.

The nature and tribal people are the neglected victims on the war on drugs. When the opium cultivation was outlawed by the Lao and Thai governments, under an intense pressure of the U.S. and draconian measures were taken to curb its production, tribes like Akha, Hmong and Yao had little choice but to engage in slash-and-burn agriculture to survive. In this practice, entire mountainsides are cleared of natural growth and burned off. Moreover, the practice is very labour intensive, forcing the parents having the children working in the fields instead of sending them to school. Planting upland rice and corn, the harvest is barely enough to sustain the life. Without a replacement cash crop for opium, some mountain tribes have succumbed to extreme poverty. Fortunately, there are many ongoing projects run by a number of NGOs, to plant coffee and tea, which could potentially yield the farmers a sustainable income. However, there is only so much coffee you can trade. We also learn opium is still being grown, as among the tribal people it has been used as medicine, a currency as well as an essential part of spiritual ceremonies for centuries. To paraphrase Marx, opium is religion for these people.

Surviving the Golden Triangle, we are ready to follow Mekong southwards towards Luang Prapang, Unesco heritage listed, Venice of Southeast Asia.

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