Asia > Thailand > The North > Mekong Valley > Articles > Lovely and Lost in Thailand

Thailand’s Mekong Valley is one of the few tourist zones left where no English is spoken, all signs are written in a picturesque alphabet not our own, postcards are nowhere to be found, and most people have never heard of coffee, even when you ask for it correctly in their own tongue.

To the backpackers who have the region largely to themselves, all of this is something to celebrate, though they might query ‘tourist zone’. Well, when you’ve got scenery, wildlife, history, architecture and a lot of room, you’ve got a tourist zone, especially when the prices allow you to stay here for months on end.

Your first sight of the Mekong could be one of the classic sunrise scenes - if you’re a keen enough naturalist to devote two days to the Phu Kradung National Park. Nothing less will do, as it takes a four-hour scramble on foot to get up there, a night under canvas, and then four hours down. The strange flat-topped mountain is home to a wealth of rare wildlife, even if most of it stays in its own forested reserve. Except of course, butterflies, here at their colourful best, though curiously the two most striking ones were black-&-white - one of them small and delicate as an etched paper fan, the other a huge three-dimensional brute that came bombing out to meet us, called (for some reason) a Red Helen. But the plateau itself with its grand waterfalls and splendid dawns and sunsets is reward enough for many, especially as you are among enthusiasts only.

If Phu Kradung is unlike anywhere else, its neighbouring National Park, Phu Rua, is quite typical of the local hill-country. Distances are long in the Northeast, and I can take a lot of this scenery - some of it half-jungle, almost impossibly green.

The hill-villages with their wooden stilt-houses and little rice-farms present an eternally restful panorama, often similar, never monotonous. And it is a fine thing to dine out among lotus-lilies and hanging clusters of rose-coloured plumes, or the lantern plant with its green and creamy white horn - perhaps to the soft sound of temple bells through the pines.

At this particular time and place - the coldest part of Thailand in the coldest season - I experienced a surreal moment towards midnight, strolling down the hill below Phu Rua, under exceptionally bright winter stars.

It was the unexpected promise of draught lager that had caught my eye. Judging from the flashing lights outside, this was some sort of tented nightclub, with the wind roaring through, chilling the half-dressed young cabaret singer to the bone. Yet she was singing to empty tables.

As an audience of one, I tried to cheer her up by applauding louder than usual. This promptly brought a couple of girls to my side, where they kept smiling and fondling the cocktail menu. I couldn’t tell what they were offering, and they couldn’t tell what I was offering (nothing!). This dumb-show kept up for quite a few minutes until they departed, still smiling. A sterner management might have been less amused.

That little cameo seems full of the Thai character. A whiff of the wicked night, overlaid with a charming naivety. One is inclined to believe that cynicism has been kept at bay through a sincere trust in the three certainties : monarchy, religion and the integrity of the state, the only one in this region never colonised, thanks to good diplomacy.

Monarchy is taken seriously indeed. A pregnant queen of this dynasty once drowned because no-one dared save her : it would have meant touching royalty. Religion is also taken seriously, but with a twinkle in the eye. One temple boasted a statue of the Buddha laughing his head off. But the spirituality seems genuine enough, right down to the way they salute strangers with both palms together, a yoga position that strongly suggests prayer.

At those rare times when tourists hit trouble - so rare, they make news - it is usually blamed on foreigners slipping across flimsy frontiers, mainly to steal cars. But to answer every parent’s obvious question, the Mekong Valley is about as safe as backpacking country ever is - which means pretty safe in the end.

For nearly five hundred miles, the Mekong forms the great winding frontier between Thailand and Laos. But it is not much broader at the end than it is at the beginning, for five hundred miles is only a blip in the course of this legendary waterway, so you do not actually witness the growth and burgeoning of a grand river. True, around Nong Khai, it starts to flow smooth and handsome like the Mississippi. But further down, we are back to those reddish mudbanks in midstream which cannot be called poetic.

Give or take the odd longtail boat cruise, your relationship is not really with the river itself but with the scenery on either side (by definition, you are staring mostly at Laos) and with the various river-ports on the Thai bank.

First and smallest of these is Chiang Khan. Superficially the village seems nowhere near as interesting as the steep forests around it - crazy mini-mountains scattered at random, incredibly fertile. But behind its predictable main street there runs a wonderful backwater with small bars and guest-houses full of the timeless charm of old teak. Little touches of France can be picked out in the architecture (Laos was French). And if Joseph Conrad did not sleep here, then he ought to have done, for he must have moored his rivercraft at a hundred such outposts; in these timbered saloons his cigar-smoke could almost be lingering yet.

Finally, knowing that this will be most people’s first stop in the region, the Chiang Khan Hill Resort provides that rare thing, an illustrated menu with English sub-titles!

At these upper reaches, the road hugs the river closely, giving you a continuous steep forest on the Laos side, till it levels off towards Nong Khai; across this plain the sunset may take you by surprise - a sudden dazzling pink flood across the water, reminding us how quickly night falls in the tropics.

Nong Khai and Nakhon Phanom are two of a kind - big commercial centres with the same busy waterfront market, odd wayside temples and select bars, almost clubs, patronised by little pockets of shrewd westerners, here for the easy living. But the view across from Nakhon Phanom is unique - weird hummocks of forest stretching far into the hills like a greener version of mini-Hollywood.

Next stop is not a town but a temple, Wat Phra That Phanom, the most revered shrine in Eastern Thailand. If you have ever admired that lotus-shaped tower (or chedi) that characterizes a thousand temples everywhere from hilltop monuments to the hollow of a roadside tree, here it is, suddenly magnified to almost two hundred feet, heavy with gems and ornate goldwork - a mesmerising sight.

It is here that the road wanders away inland, and it is some time before you regain the river at Pha Taem, to be rewarded by prehistoric cliff-paintings - intriguing rather than spectacular, but worth the rocky climb - illustrating the hunting and fishing life of about four thousand years ago.

But now it is almost journey’s end, for the nearby Moon River (no, not the Johnny Mercer one) is about to enter the Mekong, adding a vivid indigo to the famous dull red of the main stream before it disappears for the last time between Laotian hills. In spring, the blending of the two colours can be viewed quite clearly by boat at the confluence near Khong Chiam, the last substantial river-port, though purists may insist on the final run to Chong Mek, a remote border-post selling wickerwork and French bread, that marks the true point of departure.

Suddenly the Mekong is gone - and for one lingering moment we long to follow it, off and away across wondrous horizons, down to its unthinkably distant delta on the South China Sea.

If travel is about great moments, then the Mekong Valley affords us three of them - to me, a high count.

First we have the ceremonial dawn salute to the great waterway from the rocky steeps of Phu Kradung.

Then there is that little timbered street in Chiang Khan, so easy to miss, so thrilling to find, perfectly expressing the charm of the small Eastern river-port.

The third has nothing to do with rivers, and is not even in Thailand, but just over the Cambodian border. Yet this awesome experience - the ascent of Phra Wihan to the great ruined Khmer temple at the top - makes for the most dramatic farewell to this region.

A first cousin to Angkor Wat (a name spoken in hushed tones as the supreme relic of East Asia), this so-called ruin is far, far more than just tumbled masonry. Cracked and overgrown though it is, it still has shape, character and spiritual force. And that steep half-mile climb is unmistakeably a pilgrimage.

Big historic sites are sometimes better researched in advance, in case you miss the highlights. But not this one. To the newcomer, it is all wonder and suspense. Level by level, you pass slowly up these stepped avenues of greenish-brown stone, convinced that the pavilion complex above you, dominating the skyline with its winged porticos, is the true peak. Yet when you reach it, there’s another one behind. On and on you trudge, up the hollowed steps of antiquity, greeted by seven-headed snakes and lotus-topped colonnades (charmingly named candle-columns) all the way to the fourth level. And only then have you reached the home of Shiva the Mountain God, with its galleries and thousand-year old carvings of elephants and demons.

For scholars, the meaning shows in the view back down the great avenue - third level for royalty, second and first for ordinary pilgrims and so forth.

But for me, the climax is ahead : the view from that lonely peak over a vastness undreamed-of, with nothing to mar the spiritual atmosphere. The edge of the great Cambodian plain. But really the edge of the world.

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