Golden Triangle Tour.

As we only had a short amount of time in Chiang Rai and several things we wanted to see north of Chiang Rai we decided an organised tour would be best.  We hadn't expected it to be a personal organised tour as our very own tour guide called Nok turned up at 9am in her own car!

Mark and I jumped in the back ready to be chauffeur driven lol!

The first stop was to visit the hill tribe village, they have migrated from different countries such as Burma & China.

The stars of the show were the long neck tribe.  They originate from eastern Burma and legend claims the brass rings protect the women from tiger bites whilst the men are away hunting. The rings are worn from about the age of 5 and are added to every 3 years until they reach 25.  They weigh a massive 4.5 kg as you can see on the scale.  This is an actual neck ring worn by the ladies and they never remove them hence the name long neck tribe!

This lady is weaving a scarf by hand in the village and they make all their own clothes.

It also doubles as her home.

This is the view as we turned the corner into the village, huts on either side & still living as a community with chickens, pigs, goats and children wandering- the livestock is marked with cotton through their ears! Ow!

Another example of weaving!

The rings don't actually make the neck longer, the weight forces the collar bones to drop and the ribs to crush.  They continue to wear them as they believe its makes them look swan like and the longer the neck the prettier you are!  They also wear them on their legs as a fashion statement!

We bought a scarf from this family, its hard to pick which family to buy from as the tribe doesn't share the money.  The little girl was too cute to resist, she even blew us a kiss- good tactics!!

These ladies are from a neighbouring tribe and are from the Palong tribe.

The tribes are self sufficient and grow their own food, this looks like hard work!

We spotted this chameleon on route,his tail is starting to change colour to blend in with the bark, Mark was fascinated.

We thoroughly enjoyed visiting the hill tribes and Nok was very informative with excellent English.

Next stop was Monkey Mountain - Mark found this hilarious!  Say no more!

We continued on to the Myanmar (Burma) border which is Thailand's northern most point.  You can go across to the border for the extra passport stamp but we decided to have dinner instead!

Lastly we visited the Golden Triangle. Historically the Golden Triangle has been an area well-known for the growing of opium, and the name comes from a US State Department memo on the practice.  The opium was swapped for Golden Nuggets!

The landscape is hilly, divided by the Ruak River that flows into the Mekong River. These rivers form a natural boundary between the three countries Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.

We thoroughly enjoyed our private tour, we learnt so much and did so much more than the pictures!