"The Golden Triangle" a Mae Sai Travel Page by BorderHopper

My family and I often travel to northern Thailand and spend a few days exploring the region around Mae Sai, which has become one of our favorite places to visit in Thailand. Some of our most memorable experiences have been on our road trips into the Golden Triangle and out to the Mekong River. In September of 2004 we made our 3rd trip into this region and brought along a few of our close friends to show them the wonders of the Golden Triangle.

A term of unknown origins, the phrase Golden Triangle refers to a roughly triangular zone in the highlands of Southeast Asia that overlaps Burma, Thailand, and Laos. Although 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. To delineate the region, trace the China border across Burma into Laos, turn sharp west at Xieng Khouang and track a line due west across northern Thailand to Mae Hong Son, and then turn north and follow the length of the Salween River.

When you think of the "Golden Triangle" the name evokes images from within your wildest imagination. It's a place most people have only learned of in print. The name power of the "Golden Triangle" is up there with Timbuktu, Kashgar, the Khyber Pass. I've always wondered about the "Golden Triangle" especially when it was associated with the illicit opium trade & stories of rebel armies financing their insurgencies with the profits made from the harvesting of beautiful fields of poppies.

I've visited the "Golden Triangle several times and have spent a considerable amount of time on the Thai side of the tri border region that divides Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos. I've yet to see a poppy field & have never been offered a smoke of opium from the pipe of a hill tribe grower. Though, I have heard stories from other travellers & people from the region that poppy cultivation is still going on in remote hill side villages on the Burma side of the border & a bit less in Laos. Thailand has just about wiped out all of the poppy fields on its side of the border.

From the Thai-Myanmar border town of Mae Sai you can rent a motorbike for $3 usd per every 24 hour period. In my transportation tips I go over where & how to rent the bike from. We headed out on our motorbikes following road signs from the town of Mae Sai to the town of Sop Ruak which is about 40 km one way. The trip along the way takes you through beautiful, rural countryside, and into the hills above the Mekong River. We literally started in Tachilek, Myanmar, road through Thai countryside, and crested the hills that took us into the Mekong river valley where we crossed the river by fast boat and explored the Lao village of Don Sao (more of a tourist stop than actual village). This road trip really gives you the feel of what the Golden Triangle has to offer......adventure!

After a long motorbike ride from Mae Sai to the Lao border we decided to rest at one of the riverside restaurants located on the Thai side of the Mekong River. We satisfied our appetites with river prawns & watched Chinese freighters move slowly down the river.

The photos on this page show the area of the Golden Triangle spanning from the town of Tachilek, Myanmar to Bokkeo Province, Laos, and the areas from Mae Sai to Sop Ruak, Thailand. The Chinese border is only a few hundred kilometers from our location at Sop Ruak, Thailand.

The area "officially" known as the "Golden Triangle" is in and around Sop Ruak, Thailand. From the bend in the road just before reaching Sop Ruak (coming from Mae Sai) you will see where two rivers, the Ruak & the Mekong, converge forming the border between Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. From this vantage point we could see Thailand (on which we were standing), over the small Ruak River, then a slender strand of land which is the tip of Myanmar, and out over the muddy brown waters of the Mekong River, and all the way towards Bokkeo Province, Laos and its mountains in the distance. It's quite a sight!