Cruise to nowhere, AKA the Thailand/Laos/Myanmar border

While in Thailand, I took a full day tour that went to a Karen village and on a river cruise to Laos and also the white temple in Chiang Rai.  I do not recommend taking this tour for several reasons, stated below.

The tour started very early in the morning and I was the next to last one on the bus because of my central location. The first real stop was at the White Temple on Chiang Rai. It is not really a temple but instead is a beautiful art installation by some famous local artist. The outside is all white because to him that color symbolizes purity. But despite the color being white the entrance to the temple is through something that according to him depicts hell. Hell is depicted by a bunch of hands reaching up from a pit, that you cross over on a bridge. Then you go over the bridge to heaven to the temple. Pictures of the interior and prohibited, although it really didn’t seem that impressive to me that someone would want to copy it.  This was the only worthwhile part of the tour in my opinion.

Inside is a wax monk that is so lifelike that people try to determine if he’s breathing. Apparently made of some heat stable sort of wax, given the temperature here. The guide said it was illegal to have a real monk like that, but I’m thinking she meant illogical or something else.

Next, we went to the Karen village which I felt was exploitative. Karen women are essentially on display doing handicrafts. You can have pictures taken with them even with a fake Karen neck coil display on your neck. Some people paid for pictures with the women while other people took several pictures very close to them and would just walk away. The women still put on the rings since otherwise no Karen man of that Karen group would marry them. The looks I saw on some of their faces when people didn’t give them any money after getting right in their faces taking pictures was really saddening, and I left there feeling bad for the women subjected to being on display for the tourists.

Finally, we went to the Golden Triangle and took a cruise to Laos. This whole system exists to separate tourists from their money for checking a checkbox that they’ve been to Laos. There is nothing at the Laos dock site but souvenir shops (that have the same things you’ve seen many times) and whiskey with cobras, or geckos, or tiger penises, or Ginger and Poppy. I tried the last, and it was not something I would ever try again. You only have a half hour there, so you just walk around and then go back to the dock to wait for your boat to come back.

I would not recommend this tour to anyone. The white temple with its golden bathroom was the most exciting thing the whole day and it was a very long day. Because I was in the city center, I got to my place at 1030 and I was the second person dropped off, so most people had a longer day.