Chiang Rai and Golden Triangle
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| Chiang Rai White temple |
This tour is my idea since I am curious about Chiang Rai and the golden triangle.
It's however a very long day of 15 hours in a van due to the long drive to Chiang Rai and further up north.
It's an experience but i will never do it again =)
As it's such a long drive, it's split up into sections and one of the rest stop was a hot spring area with tourists doing all kinds of weird stuff like cooking eggs and soaking their feet in the spring water.. lol
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| Hot spring with tourists cooking eggs.. haha |
White Temple in Chiang Rai
At first glance, this temple is gorgeous and unique.
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| White Temple Chiang Rai |
On 2nd glance, this temple is really weird as it features all kinds of predators and skulls!
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| A close up look at the temple |
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| Halloween anyone? |
Somehow it's the owner's belief that he can get into heaven by building this temple.
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| Maybe let's add a little color to the white temple? |
Black museum.
It features a Thai artist who passed away 4 years ago. His work is featured in the studio and he's very popular in Thailand.
Again, some weird stuff too. Bill like his work but it's not my cup of tea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawan_Duchanee
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| Featuring Thawn Chau |
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| Gorgeous Thai style teak wood house that is also his studio |
After that, we went to catch a boat in the golden triangle.
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| Jetty for the boat tour (and you can see the casino on the other side) |
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| On the boat tour |
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| A buddha statue along the river |
The history of this place is it's the intersection of 3 countries. It's isolated and perfect for opium growing. There's an island in the middle call No-man's land.
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| That's no man's land! |
On that island is where 1kg of opium is exchanged for 1kg of gold as 3 countries all have different currencies. This is why it's called the golden triangle.
Now, it's cleaned up and Laos actually owns that island now. (I could be wrong as the guide english is tough to understand).
But the Chinese now owns a casino in this area in both the Laos and Myanmar area, with the 3rd casino being built.
After the boat tour, we were dropped into Laos for a shopping tour without our passport. Talk about a strange experience! They kept our passport in Thailand as there's occurrence of somebody not coming back after being dropped in Laos apparently.. hmm..
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| Dropping into Laos for shopping (without our passport) |
After the long day, we went back to our new hotel U Chiang Mai and we both were so tired that we called it a night with a quick dinner at the hotel.
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| U Chiang Mai |
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