Border Crossing into Thailand :
After spending great time in Northern Laos and visiting remote places, next plan was land border crossing into Thailand. After getting on a windy road in a small minibus from Luang Namtha for few hours we finally got to the Laos border with Thailand in golden triangle. The physical border between two countries is Mekong river. After doing paper work on Lao side, we got on the boat to get on the other side of river and enter into Thailand. The closet city to Thai border is Chiang Khong and few hours bus ride from there, took us to Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand.
Golden Triangle Hill Tribes in Thailand:
The main plan in northern Thailand was visiting as many ethnic tribes as we could, before heading down to Southern Thailand for Diving. With Thailand being more touristic and far better infrastructure for tourism, we knew that, it won’t be as authentic experience as what we’ve had in Laos.
The owner of the small hotel that we stayed in Chiang Rai, arranged a car with a driver to pick us up early morning to visit few villages.
From the first village that we visited, it was obvious that sustainable tourism is well stablished in the area. Each village had the information board on the entrance with information about the tribes and NGOs and governmental funds that are supporting their tourism industry. It resulted more staged experience for us but it’s definitely a win-win situation for the Thai government and minorities to keep their traditions alive. The main sources of income for these villages are mainly tourism and selling handicrafts. Recently we watched a video about the situation of all these villages that we visited a decade ago under the Covid situation and they do suffer from lack of tourism in the area for almost two years now.
For almost every village, there’s a fixed path to take with lots of shops on both sides which is completely different from the authentic villages that visited in Laos. Both Thai and Laos sides of the Golden Triangle are home to six culturally distinct peoples–the Karen, Hmong, Mien, Lahu, Akha, and Lisu. Each tribe has different branches and their own customs. The most well known one based in Thailand and probably the most photographed one is Padaung Long Neck tribe, a subdivision of Karen tribe. After visiting their village, we visited an Akha village, followed by few more and ended the day tour. In Laos we’ve spent days and days and travelled village to village and really enjoyed every second of it, for Thailand I think a day would be more than enough to get familiar with their hill tribes
A good thing about visiting a Thai side of the Golden triangle is its easy access from big cities like Chiang Rai and even Bangkok and also the existence of the infrastructure and it can be a great opportunity to experience a different part of Thailand away from the beach and party scenes in South.
White Temple in Chian Rai:
Usually buildings are not what we are interested in when we travel but Wat Rong Khun or White temple is a unique structure and a masterpiece that we are glad that we haven’t missed while we were in Chiang Rai. Since our visit to ethnic groups villages only took a day, we had more time to explore Chiang Rai and that’s how we came across this temple. It is a privately owned art exhibit in the style of a Buddhist temple in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand. It is owned by Chalermchai Kositpipat, who designed, constructed, and opened it to visitors in 1997. It has an amazing history, read more about it here.
Almost everything in this temple’s exterior is completely white with mirror touches which makes the whole temple shine in the day light. Even the fish in the ponds around the temple are white and most of plants used in the landscaping are silver. There’s a huge element of surprise and modern touches in every corner at the same time that it looks like a magical ancient Buddhist temple. Photography is not allowed within the temple but all the walls are covered with modern illustrations covering modern day dark history like 9/11 terrorist attack and Chernobyl disaster, some conceptual metaphysics related drawings and all sort of unexpected things and somehow tries to relates all of these events together. If you are planning to travel to this area, definitely don’t miss it. The temple damaged in the Thailand earthquake few years back but the construction started after that. It should be in a good shape by now.
Our trip to Northern Thailand was short but it definitely worth a visit. I’m sure, if enough time is allowed, there will be still off the beaten track villages and communities to be explored. From there we continued our journey to southern Thailand and Koh Tao for some diving before crossing the land border to Malaysia.
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