Golden Triangle

Historically known for its rampant growing of opium, these days the Golden Triangle is primarily a massive tourist attraction. Located at the intersection of the Mekong and Ruak Rivers, the Golden Triangle itself provides little other than the view of Myanmar (left in above photo) and Laos (right), endless options to pay for kitschy souvenirs or river boat rides, and an odd assortment of statues that range from a giant Buddha on a ship and elaborate shrines to massive elephant statues and dozens of signs and maps indicating that you are, in fact, at the Golden Triangle.

However odd the glittery bauble of Golden Triangle Park may be, its original intent was to educate. As part of the late Princess Mother’s efforts to empower the impoverished hill tribe regions and to end the hold of opium in Thailand, the Golden Triangle Park was encouraged to blossom into a huge tourist attraction. The hope was to turn curious tourists into drug opponents.

In this same vein, the Royal Doi Tung Foundation established the Hall of Opium. Costing $10 million and taking 10 years of research and planning, the museum first opened its doors in 2005. From ancient uses, through the East India Company, to the Opium Wars, and straight on up through present day, the multimedia experience outlines opium use and production throughout 4,000 years of history, as well as documenting the tragedy of drug addiction, its societal implications, and modern attempts to battle illegal drugs.

Though a bit campy at times, the museum attempts to look honestly at the history of opium production, including the drug’s history in Thailand. Impressively enough, this includes a timeline of things within Thai history like the establishment of opium taxation, legal/licensed opium production, and a breakdown of how much government revenue came from opium (quite a bit), even during times of concerted worldwide efforts to end the opium trade.

Though still burdened by its past as part of the infamous Golden Triangle, Thailand has demonstrated enormous progress in ridding itself of the influence of opium. Thailand’s crop replacement programs, spearheaded by the Doi Tung Foundation and the Royal Project, have been particularly successful. Fields that once grew poppies, now yield tea, coffee, and macadamia nuts. Farmers who may have once been drawn to the income of opium have been taught to cultivate cash crops like decorative flowers, lettuce, apples, peaches, and herbs.

Obviously, Thailand’s production isn’t at complete zero and many opium farmers may have simply moved farther afield, pushed into Myanmar and Laos, historically much more active members of the Golden Triangle opium trade. The Golden Triangle countries may have given way in global opium production to Afghanistan, Mexico, and Colombia, but production within SE Asia is still a major concern. So, while the education about the opium trade may be less relevant within the borders of Thailand (though by no means irrelevant), the gaudy, tacky, tourist trap that is Golden Triangle Park holds merit in its attempts to educate.

*To give credit where credit is due, all photos from inside museum are borrowed, as they do not allow photography inside the Hall of Opium. 

Rewind: Christmas in Laos

Christmas 2010, Win and I were given an incredible, unexpected gift: a week off from teaching, contingent on our doing a “visa run” to Laos. Your typical visa run involves going to a Thai consulate in another country with a massive envelope of paperwork (Laos, apparently on best consular terms with Thailand, is the country of choice among teachers), waiting x number of days, and going back to Thailand with a Non-Immigrant B visa in-hand. However, having decided to get yearlong multiple entry visas, our visa run was a cake walk: leave Thailand, see another country, come back to Thailand and get a new 3-month entry stamp. So to Laos we went.

Twelve hours on a train, an hour waiting around at the border crossing, and a single sign telling drivers to start driving on the right, and we were in Laos. Flat, dry, and rundown, Laos’ capital city of Vientiane made for a lackluster first impression. Buildings, storefronts, even the stray cats, everything was sparse, dismal.

Aside from the presence of a bowling alley and the city signage having French flair – a trait that carried over to street, restaurant, and hotel names – Vientiane was very much like a small Thai city. The manner and language were similar; the architecture and tuk-tuk drivers much the same; there were the same orange-robed monks, the same women hiding from the sun beneath umbrellas, the same stray dogs rummaging through garbage. We navigated the city on foot, walked its streets, saw its museums. We ate its food, drank its beer, and spent its devalued kip (worth so little, I was withdrawing a million kip from ATMs the whole time, which was bizarrely satisfying in its own right).

After a day and a half, in what would turn out to be a moment of poorly executed planning, we boarded a bus to head into the heart of northern Laos.

Having been told that there wasn’t a bus leaving for Luang Prabang until evening, we were surprised when the ticket seller told us a bus would be leaving at 4 pm. As we stowed our backpacks and climbed aboard, it seemed a positive turn of events, catching a bus right as we arrived at the station. As the passengers were finding seats, the driver and some helpful hands started filling the aisle with packages, copious amounts of luggage, bags of rice, and all manner of freight, including three pieces of PVC piping, a foot in diameter and at least 12-feet long. In order to reach our seats, we now had to clamber and balance our way over piping, walking along armrests at times.

And so we set out, luggage shifting precariously in the aisle, Lao karaoke blaring and crackling from the speakers. Up and around steep, jutting hills, through luscious jungle foliage, encroaching thick and dark along the roadside, pushing its way toward the bus windows. As mid-afternoon gave way to evening, we passed through meager villages, clusters of single-room homes, many without furniture or front doors. The countryside wore its poverty openly. Bonfires served as stoves, simple elevated bamboo platforms as beds, possessions were few. Late into the night, long after the small village clusters went to sleep, the bus lumbered jerkily along half-finished roads, karaoke still blaring.

After twelve cramped hours, we arrived in Luang Prabang at 4 am. The whole town, all guesthouses and hotels, was sound asleep. We tried knocking on doors, calling phones, checking to see if anything was unlocked, all to no avail. So, we sat down somewhere well-lit to read and nap and waited for Luang Prabang to rub the sleep from its eyes.

Ill-timed though it may have been, our 4 am arrival had two unexpected benefits. First, as the sun started to peek over the mountains and the town stirred to life, we got to start our day off with fresh fruit-filled crepes, a treat one would be hard-pressed to find in Thailand. Also, we got to witness Luang Prabang’s famed procession of monks, numbering into the hundreds, lining the streets every morning bowl-in-hand, going from storefront to doorway, collecting alms, something many tourists wake early to see.

After schlepping around and scoffing at prices (“Only 40 US dollars a night”), we finally found a place to bed down for several days. It was a dank little hole of a room next to the guesthouse kitchen, but it was affordable. Luckily, as we discovered after napping well into the day, Luang Prabang was a lovely town, giving us little reason to spend excess time in our room.

Nestled between the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers, The Unesco World Heritage city of Luang Prabang sits high above the flowing waters on its hilltop peninsula. It was my first tryst with a World Heritage City, a first fling that would, unbeknownst to me at the time, turn into a travel love affair.

Roaming around town, the architecture is awash in French colonial remnants; beautiful balconies, wooden shuttered windows, massive homes mixed in with smaller, more Southeast Asian structures. Cafes, baguettes, creperies, Luang Prabang embraced its heritage as part of the French colony Indochine, using it as a tourist selling point surely, but also full of genuine relics of its past.

French remains Laos’ dominant second language (though it is being steadily overtaken by English), and to hear the Laos (plural of Lao, referring to the people of Laos) speak French was a surreal experience. There was none of the harsh, nasally, pretentious quality that you get when listening to French or other Europeans speak; instead, the words were tranquil, a calm, steady flow, all rounded edges and curved letters. It was delightful to listen to, as if the Laos spoke French as it was intended, a beautiful, delicate language.

Mixed in with its French heritage, an abundance of Buddhist temples stood their ground, solidly announcing Luang Prabang’s Buddhism. Although, with the highest number of Buddhist monks per capita (a statistic I might be making up, but there were certainly an impressive number of monks), the predominance of Buddhism in the area announces itself. Everywhere we walked, groupings of orange-robed monks, from small male children to wrinkled elderly men, meandered along the streets. In all of Thailand, never had I seen so many monks, especially child monks, all in one place.

Despite the attempts around town to appear more festive, garland and lights and trees appearing in large numbers, it wasn’t a particularly Christmasy Christmas. And, with near-tropical temperatures, it certainly wasn’t a white Christmas (although I don’t know that Southeast Asians would know what to do with themselves if it ever did snow).

In fact, we spent Christmas Day flying back to Bangkok through Luang Prabang’s ‘International Airport’ (a building so small it resembled a bus station more than an airport). The flight was my Christmas present to us, a way of avoiding 24 hours on buses and trains. Buying airline tickets also gave us time enough to spend three days soaking in Luang Prabang: enjoying its dichotomous culture, eating French, Lao, and French-Lao food (I even ate some buffalo), and most of all, just relaxing, reading, and relaxing some more. 

Win: Critter Catcher Extrordinaire

I am the proud girlfriend of a creature catcher. Bugs, frogs, lizards, fish -- you name it, he can most likely catch it. And if he can’t, it won’t be for a lack of trying. He even once was part of a project to build a fly-powered airplane, which, as one can imagine, involved capturing a whole herd of flies.

In any batch of Rachel-taken pictures, we end up with a minimum of one picture in which Win has captured an unwitting animal. He stalks, swivels, and hedges them in, just for the fun of it. From my end, there’s something really curious about seeing something so tiny and foreign so close up. Always released in one piece (although sometimes flash-dazed), the critters then hop, skitter and slip away to resume their lives. 

It’s a bizarre talent but delightful nonetheless. I mean, honestly, there’s something magical about a whispered “Hey, I got you something” referring to a momentarily still butterfly.