Okay, so the only reference to opium was the opium Museum. But our journey in the golden triangle actually starts with our trip to Burma or Myanmar as its now called. Without knowing if we could get across the border, a day visa, we went through the Thai customs and half was built on a bridge include the Thai Government and include Myanmar. To distinguish the two, is painted in two colours, and you need to pages at this point change, since during the Thai drive/on the left side walk, the Burmese people drive / walk on the right. Myanmar is a way that they take and keep your Passport, while in their country are unique customs. You granted us temporary Myanmar passports (made of paper) and with all our U.S. passport information. At the crossroads of custom we were bombed immediately want us with tuk tuk drivers to the popular destinations in the City shuttle. In their hands were images of destinations along with a photo of their taxi (had some pick up truck where you sit in the back). In our tuk tuk (pronounced Touk Touk) we made us their most popular temples to three. A large hill with some decent views of the city sat at the top of the second temple, behemoth and gold in appearance. Sarah played a lucky new year's Eve prayer with guidance of a little boy, the pouring water over the Buddha and beat a Gong (nine is the Buddhist lucky number) contain nine times.
After the visit of the temple, we headed to the local market. Similar to the products for sale find you could be in China (because that is where the product comes from). You had everything from RIP Louie V purse Breitling watches, however, not even decent quality (what do you expect for 100 baht or $3). After the tasting to eat (not as good as Thai), Burmese we went something back to Thailand and by a similar market on our way back to the car.
We then proceeded to drive to the golden triangle. During the city we came from, Mae Sai was called the Golden City, is the golden triangle where the borders of the Thailand meet those of Myanmar and Laos in the middle of the Mekong River (also looks like a triangle). In the past, the most important agriculture of the area was opium,
made the drug lords rich (so the "Golden"). When we got there it started unfortunately thunder storms, make my images not wonderful, but it was really cool. You can take even ferries from Thailand on the border with Laos. The wind was strong, so that the market had closed, but the architecture was amazing. A giant Buddha stand in the middle of market square with statues of elephants and boats in the entire region.We continued our journey back to Chiang Rai by Chiang Säm the ancient capital of Thailand (it was later moved due to its proximity to Laos and Myanmar). The old town was surround by three city walls (in ruins, they no longer offer much protection) and sat inside the ruins of a large temple. Very cool to see and a great day all around.
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