Day #157: Sop Ruak and Hall of Opium

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Sop Ruak is the point at which the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet, all separated by the Mekong river. There is a point at which you can stand and view Laos to the right and Myanmar to the left, and here is the crossing point to Laos for tourists. The official advice is that it is impossible to cross the border to Myanmar this way and so I had already planned to return to Bangkok to fly to Yangon, but when I actually arrived here the consensus amongst local Thais and expats was that I would have had no problem if I had attempted it (in fact, most laughed when I said I thought it was impossible). However visas for Myanmar have to be arranged in advance and this is only possible in Bangkok; in hindsight I would have done this before I left Bangkok and at least attempted the crossing, but I had to give up that idea.

The area around Sop Ruak - across all 3 countries - was notorious for opium growing and smuggling up until the 1990s, and there is an amazing museum here charting the history of opium/heroin use up to the present day. At the museum entrance I walked through a long tunnel lit by ultra-violet light with carvings on the walls that are apparently designed to look like an opium trip. The scope of the museum was very ambitious: there was a large section on the British tea trade and Britain's role in the Opium Wars that even extended to a display about the building of the Limehouse docks. Subsequent sections covered the practicalities of Victorian opium smoking (very Sherlock Holmes) and the final part was a sort of anti-drugs social history, featuring a video of a family from Exeter talking about the death of their daughter from heroin abuse alongside another video of a rehabilitated Thai heroin addict (this video also featured a section deferentially praising the King's Mother for setting up a rehabilitation centre). Overall it was one of the best museums I have ever been to, which was a surprise in this seemingly remote border area.

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