Bangkok and the Golden Triangle to Singapore

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Last night we got back from our 4-night overland trip through Thailand, traveling from Bangkok on the coast north to the other end of Thailand (old Siam). The border is several hundred miles away in the mountains where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (Burma) meet in the “Golden Triangle.” This takes its name from the lucrative opium farming and trade that used to go on in the decades before Thailand did its best to put a stop to it. Nowadays the farmers raise legal flowers and vegetables instead of poppies.

Thailand reminded me a lot of South Carolina, with a coastal region in the south, a flat midlands area, and foothills and mountains at the north end. Even the rural farms and farmhouses reminded me of SC when I was a child. The chief difference was occasional Buddha images and shrines instead of Baptist churches along the road. Actually the entire country seemed more westernized than any SE Asia country we’ve visited, with the western influence visible in homes and public buildings constructed many years ago, not just in the last decade or so. The relative prosperity we saw seemed to come from a very settled and stable economy, rather than from recent change and a flood of new money.

This was not a popular trip with our shipmates, most of whom went on an alternative trip to Cambodia. Our group was only two couples, plus two guides - one from the ship, and one an attractive young Thai woman named Nong, who had majored in English in school and spoke it extremely well. After spending the night in Bangkok, which is a very large modern city boasting world-class hotels, we flew to northern Thailand and visited two smaller “twin cities,” Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai (chang-my and chang-rye). From these we visited some really exotic sites, including a tribe in the hills who lived in thatched huts built from bamboo. Nong said the tribe migrated to the area from the mountains of Tibet, presumably after the communists took over there. The mountains where they settled are now quite bare of large trees, as the first thing the new settlers did was burn off the land so they could farm it. (Though since humans have lived in this whole area for many thousands of years, heaven only knows what it looked like originally.)

We also visited an elephant camp in the hills that maintained and trained about 75 elephants and their mahouts (trainers/caretakers). Elephants are threatened with unemployment in modern times, as logging has drastically declined because of deforestation. It’s expensive to keep and feed elephants and defend them against extinction, so nowadays they earn their keep as entertainers. The camp we visited is an internationally known site for training elephants to demonstrate old logging techniques (such as three elephants cooperating in stacking huge logs), and playing soccer while taking bows and generally hamming it up. They also pictures with brushes held in the tip of their trunks. This was simply amazing. The mahouts handed them their paint-laden brushes, and they chose what to paint on their easels. Each picture was different, usually closely resembling flowers. These were then sold for $50 each. The elephants we saw were really super performers, obviously very intelligent, and they appeared to enjoy what they were doing very much. Afterwards we all went to ride on elephants, which was a really neat experience. The terrain around the camp was very steep but they handled it with no difficulty.

We also visited a very interesting snow-white Buddhist temple and briefly met the artist who designed it. To an American eye, it looks like a Buddhist temple you might find at Disneyworld, but it was certainly impressive. For more on it, go to

http://www.chimburi.com/thai276.htm

We also saw an imposing old temple in the mountains said to house a fragment of the Buddha’s skull as a religious relic. There are many temples and huge gold-plated Buddha images scattered over the mountains and countryside, plus a sprinkling of small Catholic and Protestant churches.

When our guide found out what shophounds we two women were, she took us to Chiang Rae's popular Night Market, where local fleamarket entrepreneurs go to make a few dollars (or bahts) on the side. They set up booths along a street in the evening hours. We had a ball pawing through the scarves and jewelry and trinkets. Didn't buy much, but it was fun.

At the end of our stay we flew for an hour back to Bangkok, and then changed planes for Singapore, which was a two-hour flight, where we rejoined the Crystal Serenity. Everybody I guess has heard of Singapore, but we realized we didn’t know what country it is in. Actually it’s a small independent country itself, obviously one of the most successful in SE Asia. Like Thailand, it’s on the same continent as China but at the extreme southern tip of the little Malay Peninsula that reaches almost to the equator. It was pretty warm, at least 90 degrees the day we were there. The modern history of Singapore begins with the English East India Company and Sir Stamford Raffles, whose name is still found on a five-star hotel where Somerset Maugham and other notables once stayed. The parliamentary government is firmly committed to providing a high standard of living for the three million residents, and they appear to be successful. The city is extremely modern and unbelievably clean and beautiful, outdoing anything I’ve ever seen in the US. However, this does come at a price. There is a heavy fine and possible imprisonment for anyone caught throwing gum or any kind of trash on the streets. Tourists are not exempt. I had a ball shopping in a large impressive downtown department store around the corner from large Marriott and Sheraton hotels. Visa and American Express cards were very welcome.

So now we are on our way north, back up the Malay Peninsula to Phuket on the east coast of Thailand, which by now has largely recovered from the recent tsunami, except for a short segment of the coast where it hit the hardest. They are desperate for tourists, which are the mainstay of the economy, and the Crystal Serenity is the first luxury cruise ship to visit since the disaster. They say we’ll be warmly greeted.

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