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CHIANG RAI
The northernmost province of Thailand, Chiang Rai is
situated on the Kok River basin 416 meters above sea level. With an area
of some 11,678 square kilometers. It is about 785 kilometers from Bangkok.
Mostly mountainous, it reaches the Mae Khong River to the north and
borders on both Myanmar and Laos.
The province is rich in tourism resources in term of natural
attractions and antiquities, evidence of its past civilization. It is also
home to several hill tribes who follow fascinating ways of life. Chiang
Rai is also a tourism gateway into Myanmar and Laos.
The location is now known the world over as the
focal point of the Golden Triangle, the so-called homeground of opium
production and trading.
BACKGROUND
Chiang Rai had
a glorious place in history. It
was the first capital of the independent, northern Thai Kingdom,
Lanna Thai, established in 1262. The revered status of the royal founder
of Chiang Rai, King Mengrai, now stands at the main square of Chiang Rai
principal street. The Lanna Thai capital, now Chiang Saen distict of
Chiang Rai, was later changed over to Chiang Mai. Being of the same Thai
race, the Chiang Rai people joined up with the central Thai kingdom in the
south in 1786, and Chiang Rai became a full Thai province in 1910.
Chiang
Rai's population on the plain and valleys is about on million people. The
principal livelihood is farming of the traditional crops: rice, bean,
tapioca, jute and tobacco, supplemented by fishing. Other farming
enterprises, being started in Chiang Rai, are lychee and longan orchards,
barley growing for beer production and sweet grass plantations for
exports. The provincial terrain is about 78% mountain, and 22% valley.
Chiang Rai thus also have a large number of highland population of various
hill-tribes, the Akha tribe, which lives only in Chiang Rai ; and others,
such as the Yao, the Meo, Lisu, Lahu, Karen. Each tribe speaks its own
language and follow a mixture of animist customs and conventional
religions. They are scattered in the high hills that cover the whole
region. Their colorful customs and unchanged ways of life draw in large
number of tourists to see the people who stop by the wayside and let the
world go by.
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