Thailand keeps knocking it out of the park for tourist experiences. We just finished a week in Chiang Rai (several hours north of the confusingly similarly named tourist hub of Chiang Mai). There is so much to do! An introductory visit to the surprisingly excellent Hill Tribe Museum let us book a trek and set the context for the area:
Northern Thailand is an ethnic jumble of different tribes. The Myanmar-Thailand-Laos border area has been the site of countless population migrations through the centuries and approximately one million "hill people" live in the region as subsistence farmers. More recently this was infamously dubbed the "Golden Triangle" of opium and heroin production, and produced most of the world's heroin from the 50s until Thai crackdowns in the 90s and early 2000s. The Hill Tribes share similar difficulties with all the indigenous peoples we've seen throughout our trip: the balance of tradition vs. modernization and preserving the ecosystem while eking out a hard living.
Hill Tribe Trekking
We spent three days trekking through Akha, Lahu, and Karen villages with our trusty Lahu guide Yati. We took a longtail boat down the Kok River and tromped around the hills, waterfalls, fields, and bamboo forests for hours while Yati pointed out the plants and insect life. Bamboo, elephant grass, rice, papayas, pineapples, bananas, rubber trees, spiders the size of my hand, bugs everywhere.
The first night we stayed in Yati's village Ban Yafu, founded by his grandfather in the 50s. His bamboo house is on stilts, and underneath live a pig and four piglets plus a dog and four puppies. We loved it! The pigs kept trying to steal the dogs' food, and the parent dogs kept sneaking up into the house for the family's food. Then the rooster would run in the door, and Yati would call all the animals "naughty" and threatening to eat them for breakfast. We slept in a tiny bamboo guest house in torrential rain. Safe in two layers of mosquito netting, I tried to forget seeing on the wall yet another spider the size of my hand.
Everything here is made from bamboo. Houses, fences, water pipes, furniture. One lunch on our trek Yati used his trusty machete to make bamboo pots to cook noodles over a bamboo fire, which he served to us in bamboo cups with bamboo chopsticks. He also cut open more bamboo to harvest grubs, which he stored in a bamboo tube. We fried them up for dinner and they were delicious.
The second night we stayed in an Akha village. Not on stilts and more modern than the Lahu village. As luck would have it they were celebrating the reelection of the village chief that night! Yati warmed us up with some rice whiskey and puzzle games, and then we briefly crashed the chief's house party to pay our respects.
Our trek was fantastic, but be careful traveling in this area because it's too easy to book yourself on a "human zoo" trek and never see a real village. For example, the "long-neck" Karen tribeswomen who extend their necks with metal rings aren't from Thailand, they were brought from Myanmar by a businessman.
Heaven, Hell, and Giraffes
Back in Chiang Rai we rented a scooter and drove around to all the sights, since the best stuff is out of the city. Priscilla is a scooter pro from her time in Taiwan, but I got to try it out on some of the smaller, safer roads. Everything is easy except for sharp turns and getting over the irrational fear that everything is going to hit you and your legs are just right there in the way to be hit. Priscilla did most of the driving.
The White Temple is a post-traditional Buddhist art project that looks like a Thai interpretation of H.R. Giger in white. Even the koi in the moat are white.
If the White Temple is heaven, the Black House is hell. Yet another (but unrelated) post-traditional Buddhist art project, the Black House complex is done up in black, animal skins, and bones. It looks like a wealthy cult hired a cutting edge architect and interior designer to just go nuts, but it really has no religious purpose and is just an art expression.
We also visited Boon Rawd Farm, owned by Singha brewery. An upscale landscaped tea farm and gardens, feels Busch Gardens inspired but ritzier. We rented a tandem bike, which is MUCH harder to drive than the movie montages would have you believe. Anyway, we got to feed giraffes, and they are hilarious.
In Chiang Rai we ate almost every evening at the night market, where you can have hot pot, seafood, fried things, and every type of Pad Thai. Also had incredible massages at $6/hour.
Thailand was hard to leave (today we crossed into Laos) but we'll be back end of November for a monkey festival and our flight home early December.
-Peter
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