4. Chiang Rai, Thailand, Nov '97

After our mercifully short flight to Chiang Rai, we stopped in the city for a couple of days, staying at the Dusit hotel. The Dusit is Thailand's main homegrown upscale chain, and is sort of like a Sheraton in the US, reliable but never interesting. At the time of our visit, it was (and I think still is) the only upscale hotel. It's on an island in the middle of a lake, which adds a tiny bit of exoticism to it, but it's basically a generic business hotel. Chiang Rai was something of a rival center to Chiang Mai in the northern Thai kingdom of Lanna, and the kings often moved between the two when one of the cities was burned down by the Burmese or Cambodians. (Capital burning happened with great regularity in those days). Chiang Mai is indisputably the capital of the region nowadays, and Chiang Rai remains a pleasant, small city with unfortunately nothing to see in terms of tourist sights. Backpackers tend to congregate here as a launching pad for trekking the mountains and visiting hill tribes. Until recently, Chiang Rai was too dangerous for trekking since it was the center of the Golden Triangle, an area spread around remote parts of Laos, Burma and Thailand that was once the world's largest opium producer. Opium production in Thailand has more or less stopped, so Chiang Rai is being repositioned as a trekking capital.