Chiang Rai is the gateway to Thailand’s far northern regions, and is a place of ethnic differences, border crossings, tea plantations and was, for many years, at the heart of the global opium trade. Vast fields of poppies used to be grown here alongside the tea bushes, and displaced peoples from Burma and China settled here over centuries when borders were more porous.
Our first stop today, after an early start and an hour’s drive, is in a run-down village which is home to people of what is now called the Mien Yao tribe, who fled south from the Yunan province of China during the communist revolution, and arrived into Thailand via Laos. They are closely related to Tibetans and their oppression is written into their very name, for while Mien in their language means ‘human’, Yao is the Chinese term for ‘dog’ or ‘barbaric’. No wonder they fled Mao Tse Tung and his horrific regime.
The village itself is pretty much empty, with the exception of an old lady trying to sell us bracelets and a wizened old man sat on the floor trying to light his bong. Bam tells us she’s not been here for almost ten years and had brought us here to show us a traditional way of life, but the old wooden Chinese-style dwellings have since been replaced by breezeblock houses and corrugated iron sheds, and it looks like all the young people have moved out to find work elsewhere. We get back in Mr Nung’s people carrier and drive on.
The road starts winding higher and higher, as we climb into the mountains of the Doi Mae Salong region. The scenery is spectacular with little villages nestled on plunging hillsides amongst abundant vegetation, and we learn that the various ethnic groups living here have recently been granted Thai citizenship in return for them helping to protect the border and prevent smuggling. They have also started growing arabica coffee, alongside the long-established tea plantations, as part of the royal project to turn people away from the opium trade.
We stop at Mae Salong village, where a mixture of Chinese and Ahka people live, with colourfully dressed women from that tribe trying to sell us hand-crafted braids. Street stalls sell honey, liquor and rice while the shops focus more on jade jewellery. In one store the owner treats us to little cups of freshly brewed Oolong tea and offers us dried fruit to try. In return we buy some beautiful Chinese pots and a packet of local tea.
As we continue on we pass resort hotels where Thai people come from the cities to escape the oppressive heat, and there is now a vogue for the local ethnic communities to offer home-stays for curious tourists. We come upon a coachload of Thai tourists at our next stop, the 101 Tea Plantation, being marshalled around by a guide with a megaphone encouraging then all to take group photos and giving them instructions at high volume on what they can and can’t do.
We have a far more relaxed experience with Bam, walking amongst the rows of tea plants and then having a very charming lady giving us a tea-tasting session. We work our way through swathes of different teas including Oriental Beauty, which grasshoppers eat and leave secretions on to give it a sweeter taste and a honey colour, Gaba tea which is good for digestion, Premium Oolong which is harvested during the height of winter, Osamanthus tea which is less interesting than its name and Dong Ding tea which is akin to a more traditional flavour.
The teas keep coming, as does the commentary from the lady serving them. In the end Bam has to ask the lady to stop showcasing the plantation’s wares as we can’t drink any more, and confesses to us afterwards that she’d got bored of listening to all the different descriptions and couldn’t tell any difference between the teas by the end. Thank God it wasn’t just us!
Our journey continues past satsuma and tangerine orchards, with sellers by the side of the road, and huge fields of tobacco lining the bigger highways. Ahead of us looms a mountain which straddles the border of Thailand and Myanmar, and it was in the Tham Luang cave under that mountain where a group of 13 young Thai boys got trapped in 2018, with their eventual rescue making headlines all around the world.
We disembark at Mae Sai, the border town and the most northerly point in Thailand. Each day thousands of Thai and Burmese people cross the border, many with jobs or families on the other side. The border is marked by the Ruak river which divides the two countries and the bridge that connects the two sides has fencing and flags along it, which change from the Thai flag to Myanmar’s colours at the midway point. As with any border town, there are market stalls and souvenir shops galore and Coman is lured into a store selling Burmese antiques where he gets talked into buying a Buddhist singing bowl by the smiling owner.
Lunch is a rather strange affair, served on a platform in a restaurant that doubles as a frog farm. We eat next to a netted enclosure full of the fat amphibians, and Bam explains that customers can choose their favoured frog and have it served a variety of ways. We tuck into our rice and vegetables, making sure nothing on the plate is croaking!
After lunch we arrive at the Golden Triangle, which is the intersection where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos all meet and where the Ruak river empties its brown muddy waters into the faster flowing blue of the mighty Mekong which divides Thailand and Laos. We nip in amongst a geriatric American tour party trying to get shots of themselves at the landmark point, and have a photo taken with the local Thai tourist police officer, while Bam describes the transformation that has recently taken place across the water in Laos.
Less than ten years ago, there was beautiful countryside on the other side of the Mekong but the Laos government decided to lease the land for 99 years to a Chinese company called Kings Roman Casino, who have transformed it into a vast expanse of skyscrapers and enormous casinos, with its own airport and where the (semi) official language is Chinese. Thai people now call it Laos Vegas and travel over there to spend huge sums of money as casinos are not allowed in Thailand. It’s pretty depressing to see.
Yet this is a part of the world where global trade, great wealth and human misery have played out for centuries as the Golden Triangle was at the heart of the opium trade. Merchants would meet on the no-man’s-land island in the middle to buy and sell opium, with the poppy seeds referred to as ‘black gold’ and instead of using national currencies all exchanges were done in real gold, hence its gilded name.
Bam leads us over to the House of Opium where we learn all about the history and uses of opium, from its emergence millennia ago in the Mediterranean to the 20th century. There are various displays and lifelike scenes, as well as information about the narcotic trade which brought wealth to the region and which has only recently been brought under control.
Having never really been cultivated in south east Asia previously, once China lost the Opium Wars in the mid 1800s and ceded control of Hong Kong to the British, the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi ordered the hill tribes of southern China to start cultivating opium themselves. And when they moved south to Laos, Burma and Thailand to escape Imperial oppression, followed by the Communist revolution they brought their poppy skills with them. The British, French and American governments were all heavily involved in supporting the opium trade in all three countries, to further their own geo-political aims in the region, often with devastating results for the local populations.
Before we leave the region we stop at Wat Chedi Luang, a 600 year old temple, but it is the incredible Blue Temple (Wat Rong Suea Ten) back in Chiang Rai, and just a few minutes’ walk from our hotel, that impresses us much more. Constructed, and still being expanded, by a student of the White Temple’s artist Ajarn Chalermchai Kositpipat, we arrive at sunset and wander through the grounds. It’s quite remarkable, and while very much a place of deep Buddhist devotion, it also brings in the surrealist elements of the White Temple and the twisted darkness of the Black House.
Dinner that evening is taken at Chivit Thamma Da, a lovely restaurant in an old colonial style building by the river, just a five minute stroll from our hotel. Thankfully their vegetarian offering is substantially better than our hotel’s and we go to bed happy and full, ready to bid goodbye to the wonders of Thailand’s rich history and fly south to explore the beaches that lie on the shores of the Andaman Sea.
