Chiang Rai

Our next stop was the northern town of Chiang Rai which we used as a base for our trek into the jungle. We read about a non-profit group based in Chiang Rai, PDA, that does culturally and ecologically sensitive trekking tours to the hill tribe villages and then recylces the profits back into the community through programs and necessary items. Also, all of the guides were from one of the hill tribe villages, so they were extremely knowlegable and could provide some good personal insight into the condition of the villages today with tourism and modernization threatening the traditional ways of the villagers. PDA also developed and runs a cool little museum with artifacts, clothing, etc. from each of the 7 different hill tribes that currently reside in Thailand. To appeal to the sensationalist in us all, there was an in-depth exhibit on opium since Chiang Rai is the closest city to "The Golden Triangle", the area with the highest opium (therefore heroin and morphine) production in the world. The history, cultivation process, current stats, and the involement of the hill tribes in the opium market in the past and to this day were all there, along with some pretty atrocious factoids about the U.S. buddying up to opium warlords in order to garner support for their anti-communism campaign in SE Asia during the 60's and 70's. Juicy stuff! On to the pictures!



Mike representing with the Thai flag at a CR park.












We ventured out for food at the Chiang Rai night market and came across some local northern delicacies and couldn't miss the chance to try them, vegetarianism be damned. Silworm, giant ant, and the apperatif du jour...cricket. Mmm, mmm!









Out at night in CR.














Part of our trek was a two hour elephant ride up the mountain...it was awesome! I couldn't believe how agile he was for being so big. We went up and down slopes and crossed boulder strewn creeks that I'm not sure a horse could navigate with such ease. Since the government doesn't use elephants for logging, or fighting, anymore they are pretty much only used for tourism.






He just didn't seem to understand that I ran out of bananas to feed him. We also saw a 100 kilo python that the village had caught 20 years ago.











Terraced rice farming we passed on our way up the mountain.




















Since Kim knew everyone and Mike and I were alone on the tour, many people invited us into their home for tea and rice.



The kitchen of the Lehu family house we ate lunch in. The perfect stove, just an adobe floor with a fire on it, was being manned by the grandmother since the whole family was out in the fields planting.










One of my favorite parts of the trek was visiting the school of the Lehu village. We met some of the kids and talked to the teacher. He does double duty, working for this village school and teaching classes at the regional high school as well.










The Karen tribe is reknown for their weaving; this woman was weaving cloth using a back strap to sell to middlemen who buy and take her goods to local markets to sell to tourists.











The villages (Lehu village shown here) were all provided free solar panels from the Thai government so they wouldn't have to build expensive electricity infrastructure all the way to these geographically isolated locales.













My first time under a mosquito net...malaria free in 2007!























We also rode a traditional long boat for an hour up a river, stopped at 4 more villages, drank homemade rice whiskey, the Thai equivalent of moonshine, ate the nearly extinct and gigantic"jungle banana" with large black seeds, and stopped at a bamboo shroaded waterfall. It was awesome. We left the next day for Chiang Khong, our departure point for a two day slow boat trip down the mighty and muddy Mekong River to Luang Prabang, Laos.