Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai

With my good friend Sit, now the father of the children at home, we stay in the North for a few days.

The first evening we have dinner in restaurant Kaithong, the only jungle restaurant in the world, at least according to the advertisements. Sit eat Cobrasteak, I prefer the same but from a Python. They both taste a bit like bland chicken, but luckily they are served with various sauces. Later in the evening we witness the owner of the place kill a snake, drain blood and put it in a brandy glass. He offers it to a tourist, who drinks it impassively. Snake blood is said to increase potency. He must have needed it.

The next day it is now nature blown. We take a bus to Chomthong to take a taxi to the Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand, eighty-five hundred feet above sea level. It is cold at the top.

Bare trees and mists remind me of the Dark Tree Forest of Bommel. Then we visit some small waterfalls, the Siripoon and the Washiratarn. We can't find the Borichinda cave. Another small waterfall and finally the largest in Thailand, the Mae Ya. Here I am swimming naked (I was still young and attractive when this happened). Back in Chomthong, the last regular bus has already left. Fortunately, there is a private bus taxi.

We leave Chiang Mai and take a four-hour bus ride to Chiang Rai. Beautiful scenery, mountains and forests. The bus drops us off Hotel SaenPhu.

We book an organized tour at a travel agency. With two more tourists we first go to the mountains north of ChiangRai, the Doi Maesalong. Here we are dropped in a concrete village with souvenir shops. Nobody buys anything, so we continue to a tea factory, which was started in the context of retraining opium cultivation to less sleep-inducing stimulants. Out of sympathy we drink a cup of tea.

Then to the famous hill tribes. Two Meow villages turn out to be no more than tourist supermarkets. I fondly recall my journeys twenty years ago, when some of the hill tribes lived completely in the Stone Age. I don't know if they were happier then, of course.

We continue to the Monkey cave. At the foot of a high mountain are many monkeys. According to our guide, the cave is high in the mountains and we can't see everything. She must be in a hurry, so Sit and I go up the stairs and the others wait downstairs. There is a large Buddha statue in the cave, where Sit mutters prayers for a short time.