Today Lauren and I left Chiang Rai and ventured to the "Golden Triangle," aka meeting point of Thailand, Laos and Burma, the center of the famed opium trade BUT (more importantly to the hords of tourists who are bussed in,) a great place to buy t-shirts and shot glasses! "I smoked opium at the Goldren Triangle." "My sister risked her life in an opium ring and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."
Lauren and I went. It was bizarre but we were glad we went. I shall also note that it is in the middle of nowhere! A dusty street. Nowheresville. We did our visiting. We were ready to leave and go back to the nearby town we had decided to spend in the night in. We were at this point dusty, sweaty, dirty, carrying our luggage and our fruitless wandering revealed that we would not be making it back to the town for a variety of reasons. Most importantly being zero modes of transportation. Spending the night in a border town known for it's opium trafficking was low on my to-do list so we started wandering into buildings asking for taxis, or rides into town. Fruitless. After another hotel search I wandered back into the street. Lauren had flagged down a tour bus and was now calling to me "come on we're going!" From what I gander there conversation went something like this
Driver: we are a private bus.
Lauren: Do you know how to get into town?
Driver: Let me ask my boss....ok come on the bus!
We got on the tour bus and it was filled with 70 year old Asian tourists. A microphone was thrust into our faces. "We will now be introduced to the new friends!" said the tour guide.
"Hi we are from America. Thank you for letting us on your bus." The asian tourists looked pleased. Unclear how this transpired (I think I was in some sort of blackout shock) but it became clear that the bus was going to Chiang Mai and they would be taking us the whole 250 km. How is that possible? How did we flag down a random bus that just so happened to be going back to our home?
The bus ride was heavenly. Plush seats. We stopped for a delicious meal which the Singaporean (they were Singporean) tourists shared with us ever so graciously. I sat next to an elderly Singaporean woman who fed me lots of pork. We shared laughs. We took pictures. They found us amusing and told us we were lucky we found them. Yes, we know.
Then we shopped for dried fruits with the elderly Singporeans and at 10pm were dropped off in Chiang Mai virtually right in front of where we had parked our motorbikes.
I should expect nothing less in this land of smiles.
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