Haanism

Short Note: Received a mail with 2 Travel Preview magazines and a A-Famosa FOC accommodation voucher yesterday. Very quickly, the voucher was given to Desmond, as I previously offered and promised. Hope he has fun there with his family. I'm like always giving away vouchers nowadays, why eh? ^_^

From Mae Sai (湄塞), we were off to the next destination, the Golden Triangle (金三角), a roughly triangular zone in the highlands of Southeast Asia that overlaps Burma, Thailand, and Laos.

A pretty good sight? In the centre it's the mighty Mekong river.

On the way, the air-cond of the car did not work well. The driver was feeling bad and tried to continue turning it on, with a hope that it would become cooling. It was actually much better to just enjoy the natural breeze.

They were hesitated to roll down the car window till I voiced it :)

Someone "bright" (I don't know who) came up with an idea of putting up a sign saying "Golden Triangle" for the foreigners flock to have cheesy photos taken in front of it.

Does this serve as a better description?

The real scene of the spot where you can see three countries at once.

You're in Thailand but Burma is on the left (the building with orange-colour roof is a Casino)...

...and Laos is on the right - a country that's much poorer.

Though the Golden Triangle is divided among three countries, it is a region that shares significant attributes - opium production, remote upland terrain, mountain minority populations, extreme ethnic diversity, mass Christian conversion, and a long history of insurgency.

Based on what I read, poppy cultivation is still going on in remote hill side villages on the Burma side of the border and a bit less in Laos. Thailand has just about wiped out all of the poppy fields on its side of the border.

Walking around, there are some golden buddha statues.

It's quite a common scene in every part of Thailand.

Prayers are everywhere, too.

Honestly, I really hope someday, I could just go, visit all these countries, till I feel wanna stop, then only I come back.

Eh.. noticed another spot...

...which seems to be quite a typical photography point.

So I asked Aof and Mong Kon for a photograph together.

The enormous Mekong river I snapped was much "cleaner" than the one I saw (photographed by Adam) before starting the trip. I wonder whether it's the effect of the polarizing filter he used, or the colour of river changes in different seasons?

After the Golden Triangle, we paid a quick visit to Wat Chedi Luang located in Chiang Saen (清盛). There is a 88m Chedi, which si the tallest religious monument in that area. The main hall and other surrounding Chedis have all fallen in ruins.

Chiang Saen is the royal capital of the ancient Lanna Kingdom.

An impressive moss covered chedi dating back to the 13th century.

After snapping some photos, it came to the end of the day trip. We hopped on to the car and off to Chiang Rai, hoping to catch the 6pm+ bus to Phayao.