Terminal in Chiang Rai

The nameplate at the former entrance will not be legible for long, I suspect…..

No, don't be alarmed, dear Thailand blog readers: my situation has not drastically deteriorated since my recent return, but cycling around in these beautiful regions I came across some buildings that you can rightly say are in the final stage of decay.

One of those buildings is the former Rim Kok Terminal restaurant, as the name suggests, located on the Mae Kok river (Rim Kok = on/along the Kok). The Mae Kok originates in Myanmar, and flows through the Thai provinces of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai into the mighty Mekong after just under 300 km at Chiang Saen.

Nothing remains of the once beautiful terrace and the garden along the Mae Kok.

Nature takes over…..

From the restaurant and the beautiful garden you had a great view of this river, and it was also an - at least intended - place to board and disembark for the longtail boats that shuttled between Chiang Rai and the elephant camp at Ban Karieng Ruammit, pre-Covid . It was built in wood construction about seven or eight years ago, but despite the great location it never became the success you would expect. Hardly anything was done about publicity, and due to the remote location there was very little chance of passers-by.

Furthermore, the business was often closed unexpectedly, and things were not always in order organizationally either. I myself had thought that the arrival of the western bypass road, with an entrance and exit a few hundred meters away, would be a godsend for the owner/operator, but he left things alone and left with a quiet drum . The local story is that he built this structure without permission, and without having any rights to the land. Anyway, the owner is gone and conveniently leaves the demolition to nature ...

It could be haunted here, according to the vernacular.

As the crow flies, only a few hundred meters away is a dilapidated, poorly maintained park with unusual homes for Thailand. I have never encountered the architectural style here in the north. A number of those houses have been empty for many years and are in a downright deplorable state. Who the owner(s) is/are - I have no idea, but it's clear no one cares. They are also not for sale, to the best of my knowledge.

So ugly that it is almost beautiful again……….

Many Thais in the area suspect that ghosts haunt the sometimes somewhat spooky empty houses. Although doors and windows are open here and there, it was not the eventual ghosts that prevented me from exploring the buildings inside, but rather the fear that the rot had already progressed so far that I would fall through the floor somewhere….

Already lost, of course, but how beautiful this house must have been…..

I've been cycling past it regularly for years and yet the images of these abandoned and neglected houses touch me again and again. Is there beauty in decay after all? Sometimes you can answer 'yes' with confidence…..