Advertisement
Published: November 25th 2008
Edit Blog Post
I'm sitting on the porch outside our little bungalow in Mae Salong eating a sweet orange bought ten minutes ago, probably picked this morning on the side of the hill. Our porch sits back from the road in a small collection of cottages in the midst of a garden populated with peach-colored datura, roses, and leafy trees. In classic Thai style, orchids, affixed to the side of trees with coconut shells, cling to the trunks like regal jewelry. About six inches to my right, just on the underside of the coffee table is a bug the size of my hand. It's some sort of a katydid, its body evolved to look exactly like a dry, brown leaf, with long, lithe legs extending on either side. Earlier, a young monk was snapping a picture of something on the side of a temple with his cell phone. He beckoned for me to come closer. It was a ten centimeter-long burgundy centipede with very intimidating jaws! On the way home, Ely spotted a beautiful garden spider whose web extended outward from the center of his domain like prayer flags.
To get to Mae Salong, we got off the bus in the
Naga of the North
at Santakhiri (Hill of Peace) overlooking Mae Salong small town of Pasang and got a songtheow to take us the rest of the way. The songtheow had been waiting for the bus, and two passengers had already been waiting for a while. The songtheow ride is close to 90 minutes, so the driver wants to make sure he has enough passengers. Our fellow passengers are Thai sightseers who speak a word or two of English, and we try to communicate a bit, and take pictures with each other. The tawny rice fields gradually gain altitude, and soon we are holding onto the railings as we careen around switchback after switchback. The countryside unfolds beneath us like a patchwork quilt of jungle, rice, and tea plantations. We continue to ascend, bright-eyed, feeling like we've finally found a bit of Thailand that is not consciously trying to sell itself to anyone. Once we can ascend no further, the road continues, precipitously carved into the spine of this great ridge, while on either side steep slopes plunge into green valleys and hills all the way to Burma to the north, and to Akha and Chinese villages to the south.
Mae Salong is situated on a hill in the middle
Faux Leaf
on our porch of an area once peopled only by hill tribes. The Akha, Yao, and Lahu all live in this area and now sell vegetables and handcrafts at the local markets along the roadside. Mae Salong became a burgeoning community in the late 1950s when a sector of Chinese Nationalists who had previously been harbored by Burma were expelled. According to the Chinese Martyr Memorial Museum, which sympathetically details the Nationalists' exploits, the Thai government needed help combating Miao (Hmong) Communists who were wreaking havoc in northern Thailand and had even killed Chiang Rai's governor. The nationalists, led by General Li Zongren, came to the Thais' aid and helped successfully squash the alleged internal rebellion. The Thai government, mindful of the Nationalists' exile, repaid them by offering them a new home in the heart of hill tribe country. The people who populate Mae Salong today are the descendants of these Nationalist soldiers who first arrived fifty years ago. Ho, who owns Shin Sane, the guest house where we're staying, tells us he was born here. He looks to be in his forties, and I imagine his childhood in a brand new village of Chinese people who have fled their home and watch
The Stuff of Nightmares
This is like the centipedes that Henri Cheriere describes in Papillion, the ones that haunted his solitary cell at Devil's Island, and had a sting that lasted a week. the unfolding of the Maoist era over Burma's craggy peaks.
This area sits at the heart of the fabled Golden Triangle, and for years produced vast quantities of opium, a great deal of it produced by the Shan (another ethnic group, more populous in Burma than here), the majority by hill tribe people. In recent decades, bad press about the drug trade and increased banditry in the region spurred the Thai government to urge reforms in the area through agricultural programs and force. Opium was lifeblood for many local people, and although there are many large, flourishing tea plantations, there are also loads of hill tribe people working very hard to ply their wares commercially in the markets. I can't help but wonder how the quality of their lives have changed based on the poppy's eradication.
The rolling hills are now blanketed in row upon glistening row of cultivated tea, mostly jasmine and oolong. There are a few guest houses in Mae Salong, and at least a smattering of Westerners staying at ours, but tourism is certainly not the focus of the town's atmosphere. The town road is carved out of the side of a hill,
so the valley seems to perpetually unfold in groves of orange trees, brush fires, and corrugated-roofed dwellings. Roosters with shiny tail feathers the color of Japanese beetles patrol the sidewalks, and there are horses here, a Chinese import and a rarity in Thailand. There is no post office, one clinic, a hair salon, and many, many tea shops. Ho says no one speaks Thai here (unless to guests), that the local tongues are Chinese and many hill tribe languages.
Last night we ate mushrooms sauteed with pumpkin leaves, carrots, spring onions and pork over rice. The milder (authentic!) Chinese food is easy on our healing stomachs and absolutely delicious. (Sidenote: we are seeing very little beef consumption here. Thais tell us this is because monks have decided that cows, being a large animal, should be revered and not slaughtered for food, so many people are following suit.) Today we bought roasted turnips served in banana leaves from an Akha woman and some tea from a young girl who insisted on serving us samples of all of her selections along with a plate of dried and sugared cherries. She was very gracious to us, and the tea is locally
produced, of course. Mae Salong's cocktail of ethnicities and cultures feels refreshing and, to an American, surprisingly comforting.
As lovely as our last stay was, the murky, mildewing bathroom connected to the room had a hand flush toilet (you pour water into it until it clears) and a cold water shower. In the heat of the south, this is welcome, but it gets quite cool in the north at night, and when we were sick, we fantasized about hot showers. Here, we have hot water, a modern toilet, a bed with nice sheets and blankets, and cable TV (although we have not turned it on yet). It feels very restorative, and we slept well. Our stay at this guest house feels like a perfect tonic before heading off to the decidedly less modern Lao infrastructure.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 9; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0531s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Elizabeth
non-member comment
Beautiful
Sounds wonderful -- keep the pictures coming. It makes us so thankful to know you are having this experience. Happy Thanksgiving from dreary and very rainy Mystic!