(Another draft post and I have fallen behind in finishing up the posts. They take me longer than they should) The Kok river is a major tributary to the Mekong. It flows from Myanmar into Thailand before connecting with the Mekong near the golden triangle (where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet and previously an opium growing area). We learned in our recent meetings that the Kok river is heavily polluted with heavy metals as a result of numerous gold and heavy metal mines in Myanmar that lack environmental controls. The boat trip from That Ton to Chiang Rai is written up in several guide books where it is noted that they sometimes stop running in low water months of the dry season from November through February. I have seen no mention of polluted water in any guide book, which is not that surprising because the knowledge of pollution is only about a year old. In any case, we had heard that many people had stopped using the river for irrigation, fishing, and recreation, and that communities were hurting from the loss of river related commerce. We were interested to see what traveling down the river would be like.
The morning started off very cloudy with socked in clouds that started burning off just as we began our trip down the Kok river. I was cool for the first 45 minutes of the trip, but once the clouds burned off and it warmed up a bit, it was quite pleasant.
My general impression was that there was very little activity on or surrounding the river. Though, It was not complete devoid of human activity. There was noticiable activity digging and dredging sand, which I presume was being used for,construction. I don’t know whether the soils are tested for heavy metals, but none of the few workers we saw wore any protective gear (whether for ears, eyes, or respiratory). We also saw a few other boats on the river, one looked to have a person with a fishing throw net. We saw three people with fishing lines in the water and two men who appeared to be walking across the river. This in particular really surprised me because we had seen pictures of skin rashes that developed on people who had contact with the water.
Our boat ride ended about 18km from Chiang Rai due to rapids that we were told were too dangerous to pass and we were led to a pickup truck that drove us the rest of the way. We hadn’t been apprised of this when we booked the trip two days before, but we were apprised before we departed that it was possible that we wouldn’t be able to make it the entire way. I think there may have been something lost in translation because there seemed to be no question about proceeding once we arrived at the point above the rapids.
We asked the driver if he would take us to our hotel, which was just a 10 minute drive from where he dropped us off, but he refused. So we got out and arranged for a ride with Grab, Thailand’s version of Uber/Lyft/Doordash/Instacart combined. It worked out just fine and after just a short wait we rode to our hotel in an air conditioned car for $2.
After checking in to my room we met up with the rest of the group, had a late lunch and then explored a bit around town. We did not sample some of the more unusual items on the menu.
I also tried durian for the first time. I think I lucked out a bit because the durian they were selling wasn’t quite ripe. As a result the aroma wasn’t as pungent as it could have been and I only had a few bites of fully ripe fruit. As it was I wasn’t able to finish everything I bought and I couldn’t take it back to the hotel because the hotel did not permit durian to be brought into the rooms.
Why no durians? What makes them unwelcome? Glad you made it to your hotel with only a little adaptions.
When ripe, durians are very smelly.
Jim, what an amazing time you are having. Thank you for sharing this adventure with us. It opens my eyes for sure! Stay safe!