The Golden Triangle

Northern Thailand - December 2012

The strange thing about these sculpted hands and skulls reaching up out of a pit where bad folk go, is that someone has painted a single fingernail red.

Where do bad folks go when they die?  

They don't go to heaven where the angels fly  

They go to a lake of fire and fry  

Won't see 'em again till the 4th of July

There's an Opium Museum up on the Thai/Laos/Burma border. It's mostly about the British squaring up their balance of trade with opium balls. It's a fine museum, but leave three or four hours to visit and take it all in. There are movies about the CIA and all kinds of Golden Triangle history things that you might find interesting. We had to cut it shorter than I would have liked..busy schedule.

The visit starts with a walk up a dimly lit long tunnel with eerie music and tortured human images carved into the tunnel walls.

There is no order to the pictures here today. Just another weird day in the Golden Triangle. Cooking eggs in boiling hot springs for breakfast, talking to bald-headed monks, seeing surrealistic strange structures, eating the local food...

The inside of this temple had a lot of white strings in it which created an interesting visual view of the Buddha. The visual view is not as redundant as it sounds. Consider spiritual view, overview, or other views...

This old, bald monk is building a new place for the young monks to sleep and cook. It's all open air. The weather does not require heaters for the most part.

This is an adjunct structure going up near an old temple along a remote river off the beaten path. It's sort of a boat-like temple thingy.

Our driver, Ken on the temple boat.

Carol and Bennett draw a stick in the temple which gives a number that leads to a written fortune. Their fortune says that the new baby is not expected anytime soon. Nailed it in one.

Ken tells me that the people who use the temple make these things and people vote for the most beautiful by placing money in them. The money is used for maintenance and additions...

The old temple next to the new boat structure on the river.

We are the only customers in this open-air restaurant. The food is good and very spicy. Fortunately, both Bennett and Ken are fluent in Thai.

Down the road, This ultra-modern temple has some odd images, including all the hands coming out of the pit. Maybe they are drawing on Christian images. Maybe we were once visited by really ugly aliens? Interesting use of Spanish Moss?

The temples vary greatly in design. This one is fairly new. It was built by a really wealthy businessman. As far as Bennett knows, it was built to make merit. He doesn't accept large gifts, support monks or do good works. We think we see him sitting by the temple entrance...

The Red Rose Hotel in Chaing Rai is built around a Disneyland motif. It is intended for only short-term occupancy (prostitution) We drive all-around at night to look for it because Ken and Bennett think we will find it interesting. We went into one very humid room that had some kind of bugs that bit Mrs. Phred. I wonder what Walt Disney would think?

This is the little mermaid room.

I think this room is the little engine that could.

Behind Carol is Burma. Behind Bennett is Laos. They are standing in Thailand. The three countries are divided by the Mekong and the smaller river that joins it from between them to the left.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

We got up at 5Am on our 3rd day in Thailand for the 400 mile flight to Chaing Mai. The highlight of the day is snakehead soup and a snakehead fish dish that is super spicy.

Bennett and Ken spend the day taking us to mountain temples. There are as many temples in Chiang Mai as there are in Bangkok.

This remote mountain temple only had one monk. We had a conversation in English.

The Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep temple is at 3,500 feet in the mountains overlooking Chiang Mai.

The temple is very famous and draws lots of tourists like us.

The temple was built in this site after a white elephant trumpeted three times and died on the spot in 1368 A.D.

Chiang Mai from the temple overlook.

Chiang 

The First Day in Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand

We can't get into the King's temple complex. Apparently it's the King's birthday. It's the same king that was in charge when I was here in 1967. Everybody still loves him, but you can't see what Wiki has to say about him. He's got that site blocked. I've been waiting to discuss the king until I was out of the country. American Joe Gordon is serving 2.5 years for translating part of a biography that the king found offensive. The sentence was relatively light compared to other recent cases. In November, 61-year-old Amphon Tangnoppakul was sentenced to 20 years in jail for sending four text messages deemed to be offensive to the queen.



I bought one of these funny hats at the Temple of Dawn and I've been wearing full time it at the RV park since we returned to  Florida.It's a lot classier than a baseball hat in my view.

We grabbed a tuk-tuk at the closed palace entrance and the driver took us to a jewelry store and a clothing store against our wishes. I had enough of that and paid him off to take us back where he picked us up. We then took a long walk though a sidewalk market beside the palace walls and then got on  the river ferry for $.20 to take us over the river to the Temple of Dawn.

The temple owes much of its decor to a sunken British ship that was filled with fine English china. Either that or Chinese ships filled with broken china for ballast. Despite its name (coming from Aruna, the Indian god of the dawn), the best pictures of the temple are taken at sunset from the other side of the river.

I think you can see Mrs. Phred climbing the temple (Wat Arun). She's the tiny climber with the blue shirt at the top of the stairs. Wat means temple, so Arun must mean dawn.

After the temple we chartered a long tail boat for a cruise up the river. We were the only passengers. There is much evidence of the recent flooding in the houses along the Chao Phraya river.

The floating market has been completely disrupted by the floods. There is only one vendor in a boat to represent the entire crowded floating market. We bought some bottled water and a beer for our boat driver from this hardy holdout.

A good place to rent one of these boats for an hour or two is at the Temple of Dawn. That is just over the river from the Wat Po temple complex which itself takes many hours to wander though. Wat Po has the huge reclining Buddha and lots of other remarkable stuff to see. The street outside the temple is full of tour buses and tuk-tuks.

The King's palace complex is huge and right next to the Wat Po temple. The Temple of the Emerald Buddha is the centrepiece of the King's compound. The picture below is just a common temple somewhere on the river in Bangkok.

After the river cruise we negotiated a return to the Oriental hotel river dock. It's five or six blocks from our hotel. There are sandbags everywhere because of the recent floods.

Notice the high water mark on this riverfront house.

and here is another flood victim.

I've been looking forward to dinner in the night air on the 66th floor of the hotel for months. It's grossly overpriced and the meal is skimpy, but the view is fantastic and music is good. The restaurant is called the Sirocco.

Incredible....high altitude rock...

There is another restaurant on a higher level. We had Mojitos up there on a balcony overlook before dinner. I imagine that the food is even pricier and skimpier.

Stairway to heaven...."it's just a spring clean for the May Queen"....say that backwards enough times and you're deep into satanic verses...