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Published: August 21st 2016
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An 8.00am start for what looked to be a packed itinerary. Our tour guide was a local gentleman called Addy and my travel companions 5 Italians and a family of 4 Spaniards. The first stop for the day was the White temple. Most Thai temples are very colourful things covered in red, gold and green as Boy George used to sing. Anyway this particular temple was in a very poor state and in need of major renovation when a local artist, named Chalumchai, approached the village elders and proposed rebuilding it providing he could paint it white. The elders agreed and the outcome is one of the most stunningly beautiful buildngs I have seen on my travels, a real architectural gem.
The next stop was the Black House, known as Baan Dam in Thai, actually a group of around 20 odd buildings that house the collection of another artist Thawan Duchanee whose works, mostly in red and black, represent the darker side of humanity. He used lots of skins, skulls and horns of animals in his work, pretty creepy all in all.
Next up was a tea plantation in the hills to the north of Chiang Rai and then
on to a temple where groups of monkeys gather, mainly because tourists come to feed them, some of them are quite aggressive. I could safely have given that stop a miss.
The final stop before lunch was to a village housing long necked Karen refugees from Burma. There are arguments for and against paying to go into the village, the main issue is that the Thai authorities have not granted them citizenship so they are stuck in these villages and refugee camps. There is also the issue of the Rings themselves that some of the women wear and the potential damage it does to their health. Whether or not to go is a personal decision each person has to make and I, being a nosey sod, had to have a look. Because they are a tourist attraction in their own right they have better conditions than a lot of other refugees but it is still a pretty sad way to live and more sadly still I don't see any quick resolution to the cause of them becoming refugees in the first place, which is a complex mix of inter-tribal warfare, warfare against the Burmese government and fighting over the
spoils of the drug trade.
Lunch was a Thai buffet lunch in a big restaurant after which we had a 30 minute drive to the town of Mae Sai right on the Burmese border. I got to within about 10 metres of Burma/Myanmar, it is not to be this trip but I will definitely get there in the near future.
From Mae Sai there was another 30 minutes drive to the Golden Triangle, where Burma, Laos and Thailand all meet.Today there is little sign that not so long ago this was one of the most dangerous parts of the world as rival drug lords and the remnants of the Kuo Min Tang fought for control of drug routes and poppy growing. One of the few remaining signs is the Opium museum, which was our last stop for the day. It was a really interesting place explaining the spread of Opium from West to east and the Opium wars between Britain and China. With the rise of communism in China Opium was outlawed, pushing the growers down into the Golden Triangle.
A final quick photo stop at the top of a hill to photograph the area where 2
rivers and 3 countries meet, looking across to the special economic zone that Laos has created where the Chinese have built enormous casinos so that Chinese tourists can come to gamble, it being illegal in China, then it was into the van as lightening flashed around us and the heavens opened and back to Chiang Rai, returning about 7.30pm.
After a quick clean up I joined 3 of the Italians for dinner in town.
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Thailandnomads
ThailandBlogger
technique is superb,The white temple and The Black House.
Especially, The white temple and The Black House are the supreme of national artist of Thailand.