Chiang Rai and The Golden Triangle - Thailand

Chiang Rai, like Chiang Mai and many other places in Thailand, has a city within a province of the same name.

Chiang Rai has always been popular with the Backpacker community as that journey, further north, away from the more commercialized and ‘Tourist’ friendly Chiang Mai.

Chiang Rai is the gateway to the more hard-core jungle trekking, interactions with Hill-Tribe communities and routes to the more obscure border crossings in Burma (Myanmar) and Laos.

One of the biggest attractions in Chiang Rai and a place we visited, is Wat Rong Khun, otherwise known as The White Temple. This is the most famous / well-known temple in Chiang Rai.

It is definitely popular with those that love Instagram, especially when it glitters on a sunny day.

The White Temple gets very busy and, as there is a charge to enter, the Temple receives a lot of revenue, which looks like it is spent on making Wat Rong Khun ever-more glitzy.

Back in 2019, I went to another white temple in Nan province which is in the very north, a few hours east of Chiang Rai and close to the Lao border.

That temple was a little less glitzy, mainly because not many tourists go there, although Nan is served by Air Asia flights from Bangkok.

One of biggest attractions in Chiang Rai and another place we visited is the Golden Triangle.

The Golden Triangle refers to the area where opium was densely grown in three countries: Thailand, Burma and Lao.

This mountainous area covers approximately 950,000 square kilometres all in the shape of a triangle.

The centre of this triangle lies at the borders of the 3 countries and where 2 rivers, the Mekong and the Ruak meet.

In early times, gold was mainly used to trade opium. Opium was known as 'Black Gold' . Due to the tremendous amount of gold passing through, the region was proclaimed ' The Golden Triangle '.

There is a really interesting Opium Museum here which is well worth a visit for just over £1.

There is not much to see on the Burmese (Myanmar) side from this position and currently that border is closed, but the Lao side is completely the opposite.

There is a massive amount of construction going on, largely financed by the Chinese, which includes a lot of hotels and casinos.

Chiang Rai does also have a small airport so it is not solely accessible by buses or hard mountain driving, although to be fair, when you are not up a mountain, the roads are actually really good and in many places, look like 4 lane super highways.

Chiang Rai is a destination for scenery and stunning temples and I have linked it previously with Chiang Mai and Nan via overland transfers. Road trips take a bit longer to get from A to B to C, but there is a lot to see along the way, especially when it is somewhere as beautiful as Northern Thailand.