On the way to the Golden Triangle (where the Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (Burma) borders all meet) we stopped off at Monkey Temple where obviously there are lots of monkeys running wild at the temple. We hung around for a while watching the monkeys, ahem, monkey'ing around, one climbed on a moped and started stealing things from the basket on the front. I bought a bunch of bananas and was able to feed the monkeys, they would come up and take them from my hand, but I did do all this while a man stood behind me with a big stick as they can be quite vicious.

When I had finished feeding the monkeys, they all realised there was no food left and then went back scavenging and playing around. When I turned back to the monkey on the scooter, it has been playing with one of the wing mirrors and had managed to turn it back so that it pointed at him and was very interested with his own reflection. I don’t think he could quite work it out.

Peter (the other Peter, not me) had been taking loads of photos of the monkeys with his SLR and huge external flash and had managed to upset a few monkeys as he had been hissed at and chased a little by one of them. Everyone told him to stop taking so many pictures or to at least stop using the flash, but he still continued so he kind of deserved what happened next. He went off to get a bottle of iced tea from the shop and started walking over to us when one of the bigger monkeys spotted the bottle in his hand and ran over to him and tried to grab it of Peter, he didn’t let go and the monkey got very angry and grabbed at his shorts, everyone shouted "let go of the bottle" and he eventually did. The monkey ran off up a tree and then spent the next 15 minutes working out how to open it, which he eventually did....he must have done this before to know what to do and that it had drink inside!

Seeing how angry the monkeys could get, we quickly got back in the taxi and headed over to the Golden Triangle, where we first stopped at the border point between Thailand and Myanmar. We didn’t cross the border we went up to the viewing area where you could see the crossing point which was very busy and also someone important must have been crossing as there were loads of police and some of them were also taking pictures of these important people. There were also many Jade markets here so we had a quick look around and then headed over to the river where these three countries meet.

From this point we took a short boat trip which first took us up stream to Myanmar and then downstream to Laos where we got off. I am sure we only went upstream first to make the trip a little longer and more worthy of the cost. Anyway at Laos, we got an unofficial “Welcome to Laos” stamp in our passport and then did a little shopping at the market here (we were not allowed to officially enter the country so we only stayed 30 minutes) and then headed back on the boat back to Thailand.

Back on the Thai side, we went to an opium, YES OPIUM, museum dedicated to the opium growing and trading that went on in this area. It is of course banned and no longer get grown here (yeah right), but at least after visiting the museum I now know how it’s done