Christmas Eve Day

It's Christmas eve. To celebrate, we are sitting outside in the crisp air drinking strawberry wine, eating Gouda, a fresh baguette, and delicious almond filled cookies from the Dutch bakery in Chiang Rai, while we listen to Christmas music. Here is a recap of our Christmas Eve day...

We rose earlier this morning than yesterday and enjoyed our breakfast at the homestay. Eggs, bacon, tomato and cucumber, coffee, French roll, and fresh fruit. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? It is. This morning we ate our breakfast with another Canadian couple here on vacation. Retired Air Canada pilot and stewardess. Nice chatting with friendly people...

We discussed our plans and decided to head off toward Mae Sai and the Golden Triangle (more later). Mae Sai is essentially the Northern most border crossing, so it meant a short drive North to the border. Getting out of the city here is much easier than in Bangkok. Here, 15 minutes. Bangkok, 1.5 hours and that is the Expressway. The Golden Triangle was first on the list. Taking the short cut route through Chiang Saen we traveled the secondary highway. The first stop we made was at the Opium Museum. For those who don't know, Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos were all heavily involved in the Opium trade. The museum was rather small but had an extensive collection of Opium weights, pipes, and legends. We learned Opium most likely came to Thailand from the Greeks, as the writings of Hippocrates told of its many benefits. We also had the chance to read about some Hill Tribe legends concerning the origins of Opium...

One tribe had two separate origins for Opium. The first told of a beautiful girl who had seven suitors. One day all seven asked for her hand in marriage. Not wanting to break any hearts, she decided to lay with all of them. The legend went on to say that when she had "had enough," she wanted death. On her grave grew a flower that was very beautiful, but would give both great pleasure and sadness.

The other origin was almost the opposite. Many years ago there was an ugly old lady whom no men wanted. She had never married. She said that when she died a beautiful flower would grow on her grave and they should take care of it, as it would give both great pleasure, and sadness.

Now the government has stepped in to turn the Opium plantations into coffee and tea plantations, which is just wonderful. All over the countryside we passed through plantations. Mostly tea, not sure about coffee, but we also saw a lot of tobacco.

From the opium museum we had a quick bite to eat along the river. Apparently we were at the Golden Triangle, the location where Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand meet. Unfortunately all I saw was a big river so I assumed we weren't there. We took no pictures. I think the area may more aptly be named the Golden Rectangle, as there was no clear triangle visible. Oh well, C'est la vie.

We took a side trip through a construction zone full of red clay (trying to get the rental car as dirty as possible...). On the way we encountered some cattle on the road. One had a very long leash, and had obviously escaped. The others blindly followed. It seemed a lot like school children in a way... Marcus did always tell me it was like training small animals. Trying to make up for the lack of pictures at the Golden Triangle, we took pictures of these.

Onward to Mae Sai! It seemed like this city was mostly only a border crossing, and a rather busy one at that! We decided it wasn't a good idea for us to head across the border and make more paperwork for ACT and turned around to find a different route to Mae Salong. We opted for Mae Salong to attempt to get some good photos of the sunset. It is supposed to be very beautiful at sunrise, so sunset would be the same right?

Along the way we made a few more detours. First to a waterfall which turned out to be a small stream, next was a hot spring which was nothing more than a big pool under construction, and lastly was another waterfall that truthfully involved too much walking if we were going to make it to Mae Salong for sunset. We got back into the car and continued along the way. Once again the beautiful mountain roads twisted all around and we had stellar views of the valleys below. Finally we arrived in the little village of Mae Salong.

Mae Salong is home to the descendants of Chinese nationalist soldiers, who fled and settled in Thailand in 1940. They were kicked out of China by Mao Tse Tung, escaped to Burma, were kicked out, and fled to Thailand where they stayed and aided the Thai government in the fight against communism for many years. Interesting influence in the village.

While in Mae Salong we found a little tea shop and factory where there were tea leaves being dried. We stopped in for a cup of local tea and ended up buying a small tea set and some of the local tea to go along with it. We enjoyed learning the proper technique for selecting tea, and enjoyed a few cups.

As we left the tea shop, the sun was going down. We hurried up the hill (walking... we can all stand to exercise a little.) and found that the road up was much longer than we anticipated. As I ran back down to the car, Christine was taking some pictures of the landscape. Two ladies from the local hill tribe who cultivate the tea plantation happened to be walking up the hill and took an interest in what Christelia was doing. (Darn Farang!) They happily obliged a few pictures in return. It was amazing to see real hill tribes, as most of them are really just for tourists. Please see the picture below.

At last we reached the top of the hill for pictures, once we got a few pictures it was time to head home (in the dark, back through the mountains...) We finished off the evening with dinner at the night bazaar of salted fish, hot and sour soup, and pork toast, before retiring back to the homestay for our wine, cheese, baguette, and blog.

Merry Christmas!

Eduardo (and Christelia)

Pictures posted this evening... Merry Christmas!