Nam Ruak

Another long convoy drive takes us to the Golden Triangle. I sleep almost the whole way there so cannot tell you about the scenery. Once there we eat a buffet lunch overlooking Myanmar, which is only about 100m away on the other side of the river. I have a chuckle about how one of the biggest tourist attractions in Thailand is the view of its neighbours (Myanmar and Laos).

After lunch we decide to pay the extra 330 Baht ($16) to take a boat ride on the Mekong River and to enter Laos. The river is muddy and wide. We head upstream to the place where we cross into Myanmar (on the boat). I am surprised to see a huge casino on the Myanmar bank of the river. The visa requirements for Myanmar are relatively complex so we cannot touch the shores but it doesn’t matter because I’m not into casinos anyway. The boat turns and we move towards the opposite bank, which is Laos. My excitement at being at these borders needs to be viewed in the context of my living on an island nation in Australia where visiting a foreign country requires a long flight over the oceans (hence why we call visiting foreign countries “going overseas”).

The boat docks at an island on the Laos side of the river and we are allowed to disembark for thirty minutes. Our passports are back in Thailand and our tour guide has organised our land tax for the island as part of the 330 baht we paid for the boat trip. We are fortunate because the tall trees are bathed in red flowers. I can’t recall the name of the flower and Google isn’t helping me. The flowers drop to the ground with a thud and are then collected and dried for use as a tea. There’s a festival on the island and gambling seems to be the main purpose with all sorts of gambling games set up in the festival grounds. Nearby there is also a casino in the Laos side of the river. The locals jokingly call it Laos Vegas.

Our final stop for the day is supposed to be the markets at Mai Sei on the Thailand-Myanmar land border but the tour guide offers us the option of going up a nearby hill to see a view over into Myanmar instead. We all readily agree and that’s our next stop. Here twin border towns flourish as vehicles cross a bridge into Myanmar. I’ve never been to a proper border town before (I don’t count border towns in Europe and the UK because you don’t need a visa or anything to cross them). On one side of the river the temples are Thai and on the other you can clearly see that they are Burmese. It’s fascinating.

There is a massive Buddha statue on the side of a mountain near the border. It’s impressive and I wonder who it’s intended for.

It’s already about 4.30pm when we leave the border and we have a long 4-5 hour drive back to Chiang Mai. We watch the sun set over the mountains to the west of the highway and then are plunged into a dull darkness. If you are taking this trip with children or are easily bored, I highly recommend carrying something you can use to watch movies on (because you can’t quite read in the dark). The drive is broken up by a short quarter hour stop for bathrooms and snacks. We arrived home at about 9:30pm, 14 hours after leaving. It was a brilliant day and well worth the 1,000 baht ($40) per person.Read more