While I was touring Northern Thailand with my associate Fatcheek, we passed thru the small town of Sob Ruak, which is more commonly known as The Golden Triangle and is the most popular attraction in Chiang Rai Province. At this point the mighty Mekong River merges with the smaller Sai River and the countries of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet. Lining the banks of the Mekong River were countless restaurants, souvenir stalls and tourist concessions. Seeing how the small town was inundated with tourists primarily from Bangkok as well many tour buses, I remarked rather loudly to Fatcheek that this place was a real Tourist Trap and that I wasn’t too crazy about these sort of places.

After explaining to her the concept of ‘tourist trap”, she chided me and advised that I keep my voice down, as Thai people would be offended that I was putting them down. I shook my head in disagreement, saying that I wasn’t putting them down per se but just pointing out that this place attracted a lot of tourists because of all the hype as “the spot” where the three SE Asian counties converged. Besides, I said to her, not too many Thais understood English. I pointed out to her that San Francisco also has some very popular tourists traps - most out of town visitors flock to the Golden Gate Bridge (which is synonymous with San Francisco), Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown and North Beach. In addition, most tourists to San Francisco make it a point to ride the cable car up and down the steep hills of the City.

Later in the week, while we were visiting the mountain resort of Doi Tung, we came across hordes of Thai tourists who traveled here to visit the many attractions in the area - Mae Fah Luang Botanical Gardens and Arboretum, The Royal Villa, Princess Mother Museum and the venerable Doi Tung Temple. Numerous tour buses were parked close to the entrance of the Gardens and cars were parked up and down the highway, As the first week of December was a holiday for many Thais due to the King’s birthday and the celebration of his 60th year on the throne, I wasn’t so surprised to see the throngs of tourists. Upon surveying the scene, Fatcheek announced to me in a rather loud voice “Doi Tung is a real tourist trap“to which I just laughed and smiled.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 9:07 am and is filed under Humor, Thailand, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.