We started our trip by flying up to Chiang Rai, one of Thailand's old capital cities. It's North of Chiang Mai, and older, but a much smaller, quieter city. We stayed in a quiet little guesthouse on the North side of town, and had three days to explore the area. We decided, since Chiang Rai is too small to have much public transport, that we would get around the way the locals do: so we rented a motorbike! We had a blast driving in circles around town, totally lost, and getting used to driving on the left side of the road.
We went to a famous restaurant called "Cabbages and Condoms," started by the government during a campaign to prevent the spread of AIDS. They give a condom to every customer who walks through their doors. The food was delicious, and in case any one was nervous, there was a sign above the door that stated "Our food guaranteed not to cause pregnancy"!
Here is a picture of the Chiang Rai clock tower. In the style of the Lanna Northern kingdom, it looks a lot like the temples of the region. It's also a popular attraction for the locals: at 8 o'clock every night, it lights up in different colors to music playing in the background. Every stands around and videos it on their phones...
On our second day, we took the motor bike out into the beautiful countryside around Chiang Rai. We drive on small, windy roads through the rice fields,
past the famous white temple,
and up into the mountains a bit to this beautiful waterfall.
Unfortunately, it started raining while we were hiking to the fall; we still ended up going swimming, but the ride home was long and miserably cold! I never thought I'd be wishing for a jacket in Thailand.... It's always so strange to see the locals riding their motorcycles while wearing black robber-style face coverings, big woolly jackets and winter gloves in the heat, but I guess on a day like that it would come in handy.
For our last day, we decided to head up to the Golden Triangle. We hired a guide, as that is really the only way to get there, and we had a fantastic day of sight-seeing. First, we drove up into the mountains to a Chinese village called Doi Mae Salong, where everyone in the village either grows, processes or sells oolong tea. We got to see the tea plantations
and sit down for a tea tasting or two. Sadly, John and I found a tea that we both dislike, but we found that it's nice when they mix it with ginseng.
The proper way to go about tea tastings is to pour some tea into the smaller, thin cup, then pour the tea our and fill it up again. Then you put the bigger cup upside down on the thin cup, and tip it over to hold the tea inside the inner cup (as shown). You then remove the small cup so that the tea flows into the bigger cup, and you are supposed to smell the small cup before taking a sip from the larger one. We never knew this about tea-tasting etiquette.
Oh! And I ate my first bug: a bamboo worm. They find them inside some parts of the bamboo, and pull them our and fry them. I found that it was flavorless and had the texture of a Cheeto.
Then, we drove on to Mae Sai, the northermost city in Thailand; it's basically a tourist trap now, but we went.
Next, was the Golden Triangle itself. For those of you who don't know what that is (like me just a couple of months ago), the Golden Triangle is the area where two rivers cross to form a triangle between Myanmar on the left (formally Burma), Laos on the right, and Thailand.
It is also an area that use to produce about 70% of the world's opium. After visiting the very touristy river side and taking some pictures, we went to the Opium Museum. We learned that Alexander the Great was the one who brought opium to this part of the world, that supposedly after smoking a while, the stone pillows that they used suddenly felt as soft as sleeping on clouds, and that since the outlawing of opium in this region, Afghanistan is now the world leader in opium production.
The drive home was absolutely gorgeous through the countryside.
It was so nice to get away from the city. Our guide was very good at pointing out what some of the unique plants were as we went. We saw pineapple plantations, and lichee trees, and rubber tree farms. It was great!!
One of the biggest surprises was running into a patch of evergreens. They aren't native to Thailand, but our guide said that the government had them imported and planted there; he couldn't tell us why. We miss our evergreens.
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