Dragons, Caves, and Hill-Tribes in Thailand's Far North

My 50th post on this blog!

The monsoon had seemingly decided to make itself scarce for the time being, which meant that we could get back on the road with high hopes of not getting caught in prolonged downpours. Our departure from Chiang Mai took a lot longer than anticipated, after the first bike Richard rented turned out to have major steering issues and we had to wait for a replacement. Finally on the road and riding the same bike from the previous trip, I kept noticing roadside shops using emergency lights on their signs to catch motorists’ attention. The audacity was almost impressive, and it was doubly strange considering how little police presence we had seen so far.

We turned off the miserable road out of Chiang Mai at the now-familiar A330 café, and followed a beautiful road through the forest to Bua Tong National Park. The main attraction here is a series of “sticky” waterfalls, so called because of the thick calcium carbonate deposits along their course that are so porous to allow people to simply walk up the waterfalls. I had never seen anything like it before, and the feeling of walking straight up a rushing waterfall was as exhilarating as it was surreal.

The road out of the park took us through fields heavy with crops on the way to the main road, which became narrower and more windy as we wove our way north. After an hour or so, we arrived in Chiang Dao, a small city ringed by stunningly lush jagged mountains. The mountain to the east, sharing the city’s name, is particularly impressive, and at 2,186 meters, is the third-highest peak in Thailand. We rode down a quiet road lined with trees that looked like they belonged in a California forest, which opened up to glorious mountain views. At the base of the mountain is a famous cave, which closed just as we rolled up to the entrance. Before leaving, we managed to get a peek at a strange model the size of a house of a vast white temple with twenty five spires.

A mile further down the road was Wat Tham Pha Along, Thai for “Cliff Cave Monastery,” which sums the place up pretty well. This monastery focused on Dhamma (generally transcribed from Sanskrit as Dharma in English), a moral and epistemological concept central to Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions originating in India. We climbed 510 steps up the mountain in the heavy heat, with periodic signs clarifying that the monastery emphasized a clear mind as the key to virtue and deliverance. There was certainly a dharmic lesson to be learned here, as we got to the top only to discover that the main pagoda was closed for renovations. There was, however, a cave lined with dozens of portraits of monks and a large altar full of statues. A sign outlined the monks’ strictly regimented lifestyle, which involved waking up at 3 am and many hours of prayer and meditation. By this point, though, the number of monks I had seen at various temples and monasteries watching videos on their phones had made me start to worry for the future of Buddhism in Southeast Asia.

We rode downtown to a bustling hotpot restaurant, where we got the last table. We ordered the base broths which were placed on a burner on our table, and got up to pick the ingredients from a huge buffet. Noodles, mushrooms, tofu, garlic, and beef all made it in; various unidentified animal proteins did not. It was a phenomenal meal for the laughable price of 200 baht ($6), but the combination of spice, heat, and steam was almost too much. After a very overpriced beer at a craft beer bar, we spent the night at a quiet guesthouse between a farm and a brook, where we paid 200 baht extra for a room with air conditioning, but somehow no hot water.

A Darker Buddhism

We returned to the cave the next morning and hired a guide with a kerosene lamp. A small opening led to a cavern, where we immediately woke up hundreds of sleeping bats on the ceiling. The cave was home to a cast of creatures fit for a horror movie: not just bats, but crickets that look like spiders, and actual spiders the size of my palm we saw scurrying behind the rocks. “3 bats – 100 baht,” said our guide. “Tastes like chicken.” The locals also eat crickets, but sourced from farms and not caves, where their nutrition is mostly bat feces.

We crawled through an opening so small we barely fit through it, and our guide stopped to briefly pray at a shrine that we wouldn’t encounter any snakes, which are generally active in the morning hours. I was amazed by how many shrines there were in the pitch black and difficult to reach depths of the cave, surrounded by beautiful rock formations that looked like different animals or ruffles. The Buddhist imagery here was much more foreboding, though, with evil-looking monsters and multi-headed dragons. The cave was a dynamic environment, with shifting drainage patterns that meant that some of the places we walked through were submerged as recently as 10 years ago.

We rode north out of Chiang Dao towards the Burmese border, and stopped for lunch in Arunothai. This was one of a handful of Chinese villages scattered around northern Thailand, established by members of the Kuomintang who fled after the Chinese Civil War in the late 1940s. Some settled in Myanmar, but others continued to Thailand after Myanmar plunged into persistent violence and unrest. After 70 years, the village was visibly Thai, but there were Chinese signs, lanterns, and spices to remind us of its heritage, and most of the people looked Chinese. More importantly, there was excellent Yunnanese food for lunch – noodle soup, chicken dumplings, and sickly sweet tea in cans – and a toilet branded "NATO".

We continued north towards the border, and encountered a military base and roadblock about 2 kilometers short of the formal crossing. A bored-looking teenager in uniform emerged, so we waved and turned around. The border passed right along the eastern edge of the road, however, so we were able to stop between fields and walk 50 feet or so to the east before the GPS showed us firmly on Burmese soil.

From Arunothai, we rode up a beautiful mountain pass, which then became a dusty road through the town of Chai Prakan. We stopped for gas, and the attendants gave us water and asked to take photos with me. I looked like hell after the ride, but obliged.

The next road (Highway 109) was one of the best I’ve ever ridden – perfectly smooth, with one fast turn after another and views of green fields all around. It let us out on the main highway, and we promptly arrived at the White Temple on the outskirts of Chiang Rai. Walking under the cover of tens of thousands of metallic charms, the vast white structure lined with reflective stones was almost too bright to look at in the burning sunshine. The front of the temple was a frightening structure, a fence made of sculpted skeletons surrounding a sea of dead hands reaching out of the ground, with demons guarding the entrance on both sides.

It was hard to believe, but inside was even stranger. The main prayer hall was a wonderfully ornate room with worshippers facing idols of ascending size, culminating in a 12-foot-tall Buddha. I thought it was nice, until I turned around and saw the opposite wall. A massive dragon covered the entire wall, upon which were drawn various scenes of death. There were drawings of nuclear war and an asteroid impact, there was a depiction of 9/11, and for reasons I cannot even begin to understand, there were random cartoon characters – Minions, Kung Fu Panda, and even Pikachu. It looked like someone’s acid trip, but in one of the country’s most famous temples. Photography was prohibited, but I managed to sneak a single photo of one of the sections.

Royal Residences and Tribal Rituals

Dinner was some of the best Thai food we’d eaten so far, including northern specialities like hung lay curry, barrab (minced meat with rice wrapped in salad leaves), and bergamot-plum soda. Since it was a Friday night, we looked for a place to get a drink, but couldn’t do better than a bar playing reggae covers of pop music, with a mystifying selection of flags on the ceiling, including Yugoslavia, the previous flag of Rwanda, and a strange Arabic flag I suspected belonged to a North African Islamist group. Downtown Chiang Rai was otherwise highly oriented towards foreign visitors, with lots of international restaurants, and of course an abundance of questionable massage parlors and bars full of sleazy old white men.

We returned to our hostel, which actually had other guests for a change. We chatted with a Bolivian girl, who told us stories about having to learn Quechua in school after Evo Morales mandated it: “normalmente llegan las cholitas del pueblo para trabajar en la casa, entonces estaba muy sorprendida cuando una me estaba enseñando en el colegio!” Next was Ruslan, a Russian traveler who spoke some Spanish and was struggling to make payments in Thailand with his Russian cards. The Chinese payment app UnionPay was his savior, and he told us about his elaborate scheme to go work in Shanghai, despite the severe entry restrictions in China and the ongoing draconian lockdowns. He was remarkably clueless, wondering where all the Russians in Thailand had gone, and saying that Russia just needed to “get over this hard time.”

An alarm mishap the next morning meant that we got a later start than planned, leaving the city on a road that could have easily doubled as a runway if the Royal Thai Air Force ever decided to bomb eastern Myanmar. Seeing signs with pictograms of long-necked women, we followed a dirt road to the Union of Hill-Tribe Villages, where the Thai government had set up model villages for some of the hill tribes that now call the country home. Most of the tribes are actually Burmese or Chinese in origin, and fled violence in those countries over the past 100 years to settle on high mountains in northern Thailand. These villages, however, are at much lower elevation for tourists to visit. Each village was home to a different tribe, and consisted of thatched huts on a muddy slope with chickens running around.

Residents of the first village put on a short show for us, playing cymbals and bamboo drums to welcome us. The villagers all sold crafts, which were a little too identical and flawless to be the handmade products they claimed they were. We took a detour through a bamboo forest littered with scrap cars, and returned to the village of the Karen people, the best-known of the tribes. Karen women start wearing brass rings around their necks at age 5, pushing down their collarbones and compressing their rib cages to make their necks look longer. After years of adding rings, their bone structure is permanently altered and their neck muscles atrophy, such that they cannot remove the rings. They were certainly an odd sight, with neck rings and brightly-colored traditional dresses, and I tried to be subtle about taking photos. The men, in contrast, were in unremarkable t-shirts and shorts.

A sign in the Karen village aimed to dispel the “prejusticed cliches” about the tribes, including that they practice infanticide or eat dogs. They still paint a grim picture of poverty, with the tribes struggling to sustain themselves with traditional slash-and-burn agriculture. Some tribes like the Yao used to make a living by growing opium, but after serious government action to crack down against opium cultivation, have had to turn elsewhere. The whole experience at the villages was uncomfortable in how it treated the tribes like anthropological exhibits, when there are hundreds of thousands of tribespeople living across the region. Was it good for visitors to learn about their ways of life and contribute to their educational fund, or was this village-museum simply trapping them in poverty instead of assimilating into Thai society? I wasn’t sure.

We got caught in a brief downpour as we headed north, but it was more refreshing than a nuisance in the crushing heat of the valley. Thankfully, we were headed up the mountain of Doi Tung, where the air was so fresh and cool as to host a villa belonging to the Thai royal family. The serenity at the top was interrupted by the unbelievably loud chirp of insects in the trees as we walked through immaculate gardens leading to the villa itself. Judging from the quality of the gardens, the royal family must spend 20% of the country’s budget on gardening, considering there were additionally a dedicated garden and an arboretum, in addition to many other properties.

The villa was the summer home of Srinagarindra, known as the Princess Mother, who was the mother of Kings Rama VIII (1935-46) and IX (1946-2016). After the 1932 Siamese Revolution, she left Thailand for Switzerland, where she mostly remained until 1967. In the 1960s, however, she began exploring the rural north of Thailand, which was characterized by deep poverty and a lack of development. She therefore decided to build a mountain villa blending a Swiss chalet with traditional Lanna architecture, and to dedicate her time to engage with local communities. Her work promoted literacy and education, and attempted to stamp out opium cultivation. I was skeptical of the whole heroine narrative, but at least some of it seemed plausible. It was interesting to see the reverence with which the monarchy is held in Thailand, which is much more political than in European constitutional monarchies.

Regardless of how much the Princess Mother had to do with it, northern Thailand is a remarkable success story, especially compared to its neighbors. To the west is Myanmar, which has been engaged in a civil war for generations, while to the east is Laos, a communist dictatorship in which most of the population are still poor substinence farmers. The once-rampant opium trade has all been stamped out, and the region has been safer than the rest of the country for decades.