Still in Thailand...

Yesterday, my dad rented a car we we decided to drive to the north of the country. I really wanted to go into Cambodia or Laos, but I didn't think we really planned well for that kind of trip, so I decided to head up here.

The drive up here was very uninteresting. This part of Thailand is unbelievable flat and full of nothingness. To me, it looked a lot like Mexico actually. It was flat, hot, semi arid, yet tropical. Even the people along the roads looked Mexican, bundled up with long sleeve shirts, long pants, big sombrero type hats and bandanas over their faces. Many were riding along on little motorcycles or pickup trucks. My dad lived in Mexico for a year and the Dominican Republic for 4 and he said Thailand reminded him a lot of those places.

Warning: this is a bit disturbing, read at your discretion. We saw nothing special until around 7 pm. People were flagging are car down head. It was a two lane highway, so we moved into the second lane, as they blocked the first. We slowed down. We had seen a few accidents on the way up, so we thought it was another accident. We were right. But this was by far the worst accident I've seen in my life. In the middle of the first road was an exploded corpse, surrounded by huge streaks of red. A newspaper covered the face. Parked in front of the body was huge tractor trailer.

The north is full of ethnic minorities, many from other countries, like Burma and even China. So it should be interesting. The town we stayed in last night is the last remaining town in Thailand to rely on horse drawn carriages, so that's neat to see. What I'm excited about though is a region called the Golden Triangle. We plan on heading up there tomorrow. This is the area where Thailand, Burma and Laos meet. What it is most famous for however is it's production of cocaine and opium. The Thai army has moved in and pretty much wiped out the drug cartels, so don't worry. Even more interesting is that the 5th battilion of the Kuomintang (KMT) lives here too. The KMT is the losing side in the Chinese revolution. They came to Thailand to use it as a base to launch attacks into China. They also controlled the opium in the region. They gave up in the 1980s and switched to farming, especially tea. So the region is pleasant, full of huge hills and crops. So I think visiting the Golden Triangle will be like seeing 4 countires all at once.