(Another draft post) Chiang Khong is about 1 1/2 hours by car from Chiang Rai. We left Chiang Rai shortly after 9:00 am and made it to Chiang Khong around 11:00 after making short stop at a small rest area
Chiang Rai is located on the Mekong River near the Golden triangle – the area of the Mekong where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos share a border. We went to Chiang Khong to visit a NGO (nongovernmental organization) called the Mekong school. The school’s mission is to protect the Mekong River system while honoring and promoting the cultural knowledge of the River. It has been in existence for approximately twenty years. It’s goal is to keep the cultural history of the Mekong alive while also teaching students about evidence based ways to document the condition and health of the River. It’s initial efforts were focused on opposing efforts to make the Mekong navigable for large vessels. China was the driving force behind the effort and it championed the:effort as a way to get goods between the interior including China and the ocean. Other counties that bordered the River did not object and the process of dynamiting the River to remove rapids and deepen the navigate channel continued until Thailand put a stop to it. Interestingly, the thing that seemed to sway Thailand was national security risk. It decided that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing to allow large vessels access to the section of the Mekong bordering it’s country.
China is now focused on damming the River to increase the availability of hydroelectric power to the region. While Thailand has not agreed to dams on it’s portion of the River, Other countries have. Laos PDR is one of those countries with two dams currently under construction along the stretch of the River from Chiang Khong to Luang Probang. The people at the Mekong,school told us that pending litigation had at least temporarily suspended construction activity. I, however, saw in the next two days during my slow boat trip that construction on both dams was definitely not stopped.
Even though people understand that a lock system will be installed to allow boats to continue to navigate the River, it seems as though damming will have unknown impact on commerce, local displaced local communities and the River ecosystem. I think it unlikely that comprehensive environmental and cultural reviews were performed. However, as bad as damming is, it is not the largest threat facing the Mekong dependent communities. That dubious honor goes to uncontrolled mining and resulted heavy metal pollution. While the impact is not yesterday as dire as that of the Kok river, detectable levels of heavy metal do exist in the Mekong, with fears that it will increase. As I learned the 2700 mile long Mekong is the second most diverse river system on earth supporting millions of people living on and near the river. It begins in China and flows through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Pollution impacts will spread even wider as river fish is both a prevalent and important part of Lao’s peoples’ diet.
I stayed the night in Chiang Khong while the others in our group returned to Chiang Rai. Emily and her mom were returning home while Paul and Christina were going to fly to Luang Prabang and meet me there. I was going to spend two days on a “slow boat” cruising down the Mekong.
