Tag Archives: golden triangle

A TASTE FOR THE EAST 1990

My first trip to the Orient was in 1990. A round-the-world ticket. One destination was Singapore. The Straits city was already undergoing its metamorphosis from a colonial port to a gleaming metropolis of skyscrapers. Raffles had been closed for renovations. I stayed at a cheap Chinese hotel in a decrepit godown. The walls climbed toward […]

Over The Burma Border

2002 Fifteen miles into Burma Hot Dry Dusty An illegal entry On a 250cc ATX Honda. Stop at a A Lao village On a nameless dirt road Surrounded by eternal opium fields. Children gawking at the falang An old white man in black Two men with AK47s. Watch From a bar. Thinking DEA. Two beers […]

Sleep Sweet Sleep

written Sept. 21, 2017 Tourists in Northern Thailand flock to the convergence of the Mekong and Mai Klong Rivers in expectation of experiencing the notorious Golden Triangle. Most express deep disappointment that there aren’t any opium dens from which they can watch the flow of the Mekong River. A few harass the riverside shop owners for a […]

DUST THEN MUD by Peter Nolan Smith

Bangkok was an impossible city in hot season of 1990. Shady trees thankfully shaded the airless sois. The tepid klongs led to the Chao Phyra River. Weary barges transported rice from up-country. The ai-conditioning of Patpong’s go-go lounges chilled the flesh, but not the bones of the dancers. After a short stay at the Malaysia […]

Brown Mixture

800 kilometers north of SriRacha is the Golden Triangle. Tourists identify this fabled name with the confluence of the Mekong and Ruak Rivers. The term more accurately referred to the opium-growing regions in Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, where once most of the world’s opium was grown by the tribesmen living beyond the law. Back […]