THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

The Golden Triangle
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The Golden Triangle is a river junction where the countries of Thailand, Laos and Burma(Myanmar) converge, it was originally known as an illegal trade Mecca of Opium between the three countries. However since the 1980's the Thai royal family (especially the queen mother) have been making it there business to do what they can to eradicate the trade via re-generation and education of the people. These days the opium trade out of the area is all but dead and it's main source of income is farming and tourism. After an early rise, we mini bused our way to Chang Rai then onto the golden triangle, it was definitely an amazing place to visit, but between the half hour at Burma border, the rush to visit the hill tribe and long-neck tribe and then the 1 hour river trip across to Laos it all felt a little bit, well "staged".... But besides the odd voyeuristic experience it was also an educational tour. Right from learning about the forced migration of the long-neck tribes from Burma to Thailand by the Burmese government at the time and wondering how the devil do they get that cobra into the whisky bottle, there was definitely plenty to think about!?

Laos
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Once the tour was over we had the bus drop us off in Chang Sean on the river which turned out to be one of those country towns where not a lot happens but if you explore you are bound to find a fun experience... Once settled into the hotel we ventured out onto the streets to explore the local night market, braving up the rumours to avoid all Thai street cooking and building up enough confidence to identify fresh food we partook in consuming a delightful dish of sweet coconut cake. From the look on the faces of the young teens who served us it was as foreign experience to them as it was to us... but a great one at that, we walked away with both parties smiling and waving 'good bye'. By the time we made it to the end of the night market and had shown our respect by standing still while they played the Thai national anthem over the public loud speakers, we were starting to feel dinner would be a good option.

I picked up a random prawn and smelt it... FRESH!

River Restaurant
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We continued exploring by heading to the riverside.(Surely there would be a restaurant there?)Sure enough there were plenty of restaurants... all set up by street vendors taking over the broad walk by the river.... It was here that Anne and I decided to go the extra gamut and trust in the fact that there were plenty of other people eating here so why shouldn't we.... Not wanting to jump in feet first though, we approached a respectable looking vendor who passed us an English menu and asked would we like a seat? I responded by as kindly as possible asking if I could please smell the prawns the were offering. With a smile and an indicating nod I picked up a random prawn and smelt it..... FRESH! It's like it had just been plucked from the ocean that day.... With that we sat down, ordered a fish BBQ'ed in a bamboo pipe and prawn Tom Yum soup and proceeded to have one of the freshest Thai meals yet. Not only that, a local at the table next to us enjoying that fact that he could practice his English offered us some Thai whisky to go with the meal... only adding to it's authenticity... Brilliant night by all.

Night Market
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After the meal we thanked the table next to us and our hosts and proceeded across the road to a local bar to finish the night off in true holiday style.... Our bums had only just touched the seat when not only to our surprise the group of mainly young ladies(I use ladies tentatively) erupted into a massive brawl of pushing and furniture throwing(kid you not, a small bar stool did fly across the room). As you can imagine Anne and I quite shocked at this decided to jump up and head to the bar next door which on reflection seemed to have a little better behaved cliental. Once all the action had calmed down we toasted to an action packed week and were invited by a number of locals to try there cocktail shots of whisky, lemonade, lemon juice and sugar. Once mixed you whole heartedly slammed the shot glass down on the table at which it would fizz like a shook up bottle of coke and you would them proceed to throw it down... after all that fun, lets just say that we had a good nights sleep before waking up and heading to Chang Rai for a longer than expected stop over....