Monday, February 05, 2007

Chiang Saen

The next morning we went on what we thought would be a day trip to Chiang Saen and the Golden Triangle. The Golden Triangle is the area where the Thai, Laotian, and Burmese borders meet, and it's most famous (or rather infamous) for its history of opium production.


After getting off the bus in Chiang Saen, we walked 2 kilometers to a guest house that rented out bikes (it was only 10 km to the actual Golden Triangle area), but they were all out of bikes. Slightly annoyed, and getting hungry, we waited for one of the infrequent songtaos to take us the rest of the way. We got some pad si ew and stir-fried morning glory and walked about 2 more kilometers to the Hall of Opium. This was a top-notch museum. Everything was translated to English, and it had great modern architecture and good exhibit design. It even had a super fancy introduction video that showed the location of all the fire exits. The exhibit was really informative--did you know it was the British that introduced opium smoking to the Chinese and not the other way around?

After the museum, we walked around Sop Ruak, the town that has made itself the Golden Triangle. It was less than spectacular. There was a lot of touristy photo opportunity type stuff.



This fat Buddha was kind of neat.



You put coins in a funnel and they rolled down a ramp into his belly.


We got back to Chiang Saen and it was already pretty late. We were a little worried about missing our bus back to Chiang Rai, but I really wanted to see some of the ruins there because they seemed very different from the Sukkothai and Ayuthaya period ruins we had seen before. We walked down to some ruins and on the way back, while arguing over whether we should wait on the street for the bus, or walk back to the main bus stop, we missed the last bus.

After some crying, we made it to a guest house where we cried some more. That night, this bowl of noodles cheered us up.


We pointed to a bowl of pork blood and the vendor motioned whit his hand that he would leave it out for us. "No! Yes! We want that! Good! Dii! Arawy arawy!" He looked at us like "Really? OK..." I know it sounds gross, but pork blood makes the broth so much better. You really should try it if you ever have the opportunity. I hear some Pho places have the option of pork blood in the broth.


After those noodles and a bowl of soy milk, we had forgotten all our troubles.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hallo. i don't have any particularly relevant thing to comment, but i wanted to let ya'll know that i'm reading, or at least perusing this things, and it's really neat. food sounds good, as do monkeys.

Anonymous said...

I am still waiting - did you try the durian? After all the mouth-watering food descriptions, I really would love to know if you tried the stinky fruit and what it really tastes like!

Sharona said...

I do seem to remember from asian american studies (which I took to be more aware about my own culture but ended up wishing I took african american studies instead) that the British introduced opium to the Chinese. They needed something to trade to the Chinese so that they wouldn't have to pay lots of money, and decided to make them addicted to opium. Problem solved!...History depresses me.

Lyndsay said...

We haven't tried durian yet. We don't see them very often and when we do they are sold as a whole durian. Maybe we will get to try one in vietnam. I've been hoping to find a place with durian flavored cakes.

Anonymous said...

? you guys can get fresh durian here too, no? also the same with the dragon fruit. don't think the dragon fruit here is as tasty as it is in china though... possibly the durian is better in thailand than here too?

- lillian