A few photos taken in the Golden Triangle in 1983.
We’d found a guide in Chiang Mai and set off with three others for a few days in the mountains, sleeping in pretty rustic villages like this one:
The hut where we spent the night (slept?!) with the pigs and chickens—no avian flu back then!
Everything was really dirty. Our guide let the cutlery and plates soak in a pot of boiling water for a while before we ate!
The kids were as filthy as everything else.
When we were washing up in the stream, about ten armed guys showed up and threatened us—what a scare! The guide stepped in and talked to them, which eased the tension. Turns out every clearing was covered in poppies (like purple poppies), and they were there to guard them.
Every now and then, the army would swoop in by helicopter and raze everything 😠. Since that sometimes ended with quite a few deaths, the mountain villagers would take revenge by killing anything that passed through. That’s why there were army checkpoints on some roads and rivers.
Especially near Chiang Rai, there was a checkpoint where they’d take our passports and note the time we passed—so if we disappeared, they could track down the culprits more easily!!!
We went back to Chiang Rai in 2015—what a different era 😎.
On the flight home, we read in the Bangkok Post that five tourists had just disappeared in that same area...
Back then, the poppies were turned into morphine in clandestine labs and sold through a whole network of middlemen.
I think all that trafficking is over now.
After seeing the poppies by day, that evening the village elder let us try some in the form of opium pipes:
He’d put the little opium ball at the end of the pipe and heat it up... reminded me of Tintin!!
Amazing smell, but after two pipes, a guaranteed headache for 12 hours.
He’d smoke 10 to 12 every night, and there he was the next morning, fresh as a daisy.
Ten seconds after this photo, one of us almost stepped on a cobra and was sick for a day or two. I’d always doubted that fear could make you ill, but since that day, I believe it’s possible.
Like you said, "what memories..." 🙂🙂🙂
