A Visit to the Opium King
The road twists and turns as we coast up a curvy road wrapped around a hill. The flat alluvial plains of the Kok river disappear behind us and ahead lies the misty green mountains that roll on towards the Myanmar border. Banana trees flash by and in the distance coffee bushes dot the hillside like small green balls of cotton laid in neat rows. Dry rice husks stand still in tranquil rice paddies adding square patches of straw-yellow to the greenery as they cling to the hillside in steep terraces. Mobile phone reception is patchy and it feels as if the city of Chiang Rai is a world away. And then, reaching the top, the road flattens out as small houses flash beside us as we drive along a hilltop ridge.
“Ban Thoet Thai,” announces our taxi driver, Teep.
“Di mak,” (very good) I reply.
We have arrived at the town of the opium king. Former opium king, I should add.
Source: Lachlan Page © 2022
I am travelling in northern Thailand in an area known as the Golden Triangle—a term initially coined by the CIA to refer to the mountainous region where Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet. A stunning mix of tranquil rice paddies, misty mountains, and ethnic hill tribes surrounding the convergence of the mighty Mekong river and the smaller Ruak and Kok rivers. The area has an infamous history. It once supplied the lion’s share of the world’s opium, hence the CIA naming. But in recent times the Thai government and the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) have worked to bring in a crop-substitution programme for farmers, which explains the variety of crops spread out across the hills and valleys. Later, back in Chiang Rai, the provincial capital, UNODC officials would confirm that the crop substitution programme is still ongoing with coffee hoped to be the new cash crop for the region.
But it’s the history and story of the so-called opium king Khun Sa which has intrigued me and, as my curiosity got the better of me, caused our detour while visiting the nearby tea plantations of Mae Salong. However, I should note this is not an article to glorify drugs or trafficking, I previously lived in Colombia and, understanding its history, one can’t help but be aware of the violence that follows the black market and illegal trade in narcotics. But nonetheless, there is something that draws us to these clandestine stories, and because this story is not particularly well known, and with the recent decriminalisation of marijuana in Thailand, I thought it was worth telling.
We had arrived at Ban Thoet Thai (formerly Ban Hin Taek), a small mountain town a few clicks from the Myanmar border. Founded in 1903, it is ethnically diverse, as are many areas in Chiang Rai province, with Shan, Yunnanese, Lahu, and Akha people making up the inhabitants. The signs on small shops and restaurants that now flash by show Thai, Chinese, and Burmese scripts as I use a map app I have downloaded—reception is patchy up here—to help guide Teep through a series of turns in the town’s narrow streets. We arrive at a short dirt track leading up into the jungle and continue on uphill, after a few minutes we pull up at a cluster of utility vehicles, motorbikes, and—to our surprise—a white marquee set up over plastic tables and chairs filled with food and drink. A steady rhythm beats on a drum accompanied by bells and chimes, as we descend from the taxi. It’s an atmosphere of celebration, not what you would expect at the former camp of a notorious warlord/opium dealer/freedom fighter, Khun Sa. But in all my years of travel, stranger things have happened.
Source: Lachlan Page © 2022
The history of Khun Sa and his legacy is a complicated one. He has been described as (depending on who you ask) a war lord, an opium dealer, a freedom fighter, and/or a Robin Hood-esque character who operated in the Golden Triangle during the 70s and 80s. His former Thai base which we were visiting is now a museum for mostly local tourists, it appears. But Khun Sa’s story doesn’t begin here, it begins in neighbouring Myanmar, formerly British Burma where he was born Zhang Qifu (or Chang Chi-fu) in 1934 to a Chinese father and Shan mother. The Shan are a minority ethnic group in Myanmar, who have struggled for an independent Shan state or at the very least, great autonomy. At 18, he trained with the Kuomintang (KMT), Chinese Nationalist Army soldiers who had retreated across the border into Burma from south-west China after their defeat in the Chinese civil war. The rest fled to Taiwan. It’s thought that Khun Sa’s father was in fact one of these fleeing soldiers.
Not one to take orders and to take advantage of the booming opium trade, Khun Sa broke away and formed his own militia with other deserting soldiers, deciding to call himself “the Lord of Prosperity” — Khun Sa in the Shan language. Rising in the ranks of the Golden Triangle opium trade he was eventually captured and arrested by the Burmese military and spent time in prison in Rangoon (present day Yangon).
On release in 1974, Khun Sa relocated across the border to Ban Hin Taek in Thailand (present day Ban Thoet Thai where we are now), cultivating influential Thai military figures who used him to help lessen the strength of the remnants of the Kuomintang forces still lingering in the jungle, increase Thai influence in Myanmar, and suppress communist insurgents (it was during the Cold War after all). It was in this period that Khun Sa showed his benevolent side building schools, a hospital, water & electricity supplies to help the townsfolk of Ban Thoet Thai and hence why I was now about to witness a small celebration to worship him on a lazy Sunday in northern Thailand.
Out of the car and venturing towards the marquee, I see they are actually packing it up. A man approaches smiling and shakes my hand. “Sawatdee krup,” he says.
I return the greeting and ask in English, “party?”
He smiles and nods.
Our driver, Teep, appears beside me and after a quick exchange with the man, he quickly types into Google Translate on his phone, our main means of communication so far, and after a few moments the English translation appears: “Khun Sa worship celebration.”
After another quick exchange between Teep and the man, the man smiles and encouragingly points towards a large bronze statue of a man on top of a horse.
“Welcome, welcome,” he says, opening his arms wide and waving us towards the statue.
As I approach, women dance around the statue—which I now recognise as Khun Sa— following the beat of a drum. They’re dressed in sarongs in a hill tribe pattern common in the markets in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. Open bottles of water, orange and green flavoured fizzy drinks—open with straws—and small packets of crisps are at the horse's feet mixed amongst melted candle wax and a bowl containing leaves and a lotus flower. All offerings to Khun Sa’s spirit. A small terracotta pot holds incense sticks which burn slowly, filing the air with hints of jasmine and lavender. Kids run around as young and old smile and join in the festivities. It’s a welcoming atmosphere, not one you’d expect from a museum of a former warlord/drug baron.
Source: Lachlan Page © 2022
Turning away from the statue I see a gathering of shacks and buildings one hundred metres away—Khun Sa’s former base. The compound buildings are basic—bricks and concrete, tin roofs, with chicken wire for windows. Trees and bushes have grown around it, slowly overtaking it. I head towards them and I’m greeted by a smiling elderly man holding a broom. He monitors for me to enter through a gate and then he turns and proceeds to unlock several of the doors leading to a room of information boards with photos and writing in Thai and Burmese. I wander through, using the Google Translate app and begin to decipher the texts.
Source: Lachlan Page © 2022
With the celebration, it seems that it’s Khun Sa’s Robin Hood legacy that lives on in Ban Thoet Thai. His assistance to the cause of Shan statehood also resonates with locals. In the museum, the Shan State flag—three horizontal stripes in red, green and yellow behind a white circle—is prominently displayed next to the Mong Tai Army flag of yellow mountains on a sky blue background with a white start in the top left corner. The exhibit talks of his accomplishments in fighting for Shan independence from Myanmar, although many commentators cite his supposed revolutionary ideals as a ruse to continue his opium trafficking and gain local support.
Indeed, during the 1980s, when Khun Sa was situated back in Myanmar, Aussie journalist Stephen Rice visited him and interviewed him for Australian television. In the interview, Sa offered to destroy up to half the world’s heroin supply if the Australian government would supply $50 million cash or agricultural aid per year over a period of eight years. When questioned about this in the Australian Parliament, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade at the time, Gareth Evans, responded: “He is not a revolutionary leader but a major drug trafficker. The Australian Government is simply not in the business of paying criminals to refrain from criminal activity.” It appears that not everyone bought Khun Sa’s ruse of using revolutionary ideals as a front for his drug trafficking organisation.
As I exit the museum part, I see a row of doors set around a tree. One of them is open and when I enter two Thai women beautifully dressed in mustard yellow traditional dresses are taking selfies with a life-sized statue of Khun Sa. The effigy is sitting cross legged, dressed in green with a brown chequered scarf slung over the shoulders. After the selfie, they light incense sticks and candles as an offering and place it among the bottles of open water and fizzy drinks. They smile, greet me, and then exit, leaving me face to face with my second statue of Khun Sa for the day. Next to it sits a large framed photo of Khun Sa atop a horse, the obvious inspiration for the bronze statue outside.
Source: Lachlan Page © 2022
I exit Khun Sa’s room—without taking a selfie—and head back to the car, mulling over Khun Sa’s legacy. The benevolent factor aside, his legacy is mixed. After being released from prison in Myanmar, and having established this new base in Thailand, he assembled a new army—the Shan United Army, a liberation front to form a Shan state independent of Myanmar. This group later merged with another Shan nationalist group to create the Mong Tai Army, one of the flags prominently displayed around the camp. With 20,000 troops under his command and at its peak, he was able to gain control over large swathes of land and continue to develop his opium business. That is until the 1980s when the US government began to take notice. Having previously turned a blind eye to Khun Sa’s opium trading as he helped to dampen communist guerrillas, the War on Drugs was picking up pace. The DEA (the US’s Drug Enforcement Agency) estimated that he controlled 70% of the drugs coming into the USA and so something had to be done, leading to the Americans placing a $2 million bounty on his head. However, they never caught him. After competitors entered the opium trade and within descent in the ranks of the Shan resistance army, Khun Sa’s influence began to wane. In 1996, he handed himself in to the Burmese government and moved to Yangon with a large fortune, eventually dying in 2007. The Myanmar government tolerated his presence as he invested in local projects.
Sitting at a tea plantation forty minutes away in Mae Salong—it also has a curious history itself, formed by ex-KMT soldiers—and while sipping on jasmine tea and slurping up a plate of spicy Yunnanese style noodles, I mulled over the experience. My time in Colombia has made me no stranger to the effects of the trafficking of illegal drugs as Pablo Escobar unleashed terror on the country. His image has since been turned into something of a cult figure with “narco” tourism a prominent feature of the gringo trail in his former home town of Medellín. Khun Sa’s former camp was more a museum to showcase his assistance in the plight of Shan independence than a cult-like curiosity that attracts narcos fans to Medellín. Still, it gave me a lot to think about as I carefully mixed my noodles with just the right amount of dark red chilli paste.
Source: Lachlan Page © 2022
I thought of the happy faces worshipping Khun Sa’s memory on a tranquil Sunday, likely those who had benefited from the trade—the hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure that was built where the government was absent. But it’s equally important to consider the victims all over the world as a result of heroin trafficking. It’s a complicated situation, which requires a complex and nuanced solution in a globalised world. As in other places, cracking down hard doesn’t necessarily stop the drugs, they just move location, like an elaborate game of whack-a-mole. As drug trafficking and violence subsided in Colombia—but not disappeared, nor has the cocaine supply—it has only meant that cartels in Mexico have developed and grown stronger, transplanting the problem to another country. Someone else’s problem. Today, the opium trade is centred on Afghanistan and used to fuel illegal crime networks and the Taliban. Crystal meth seems to be the new drug of choice emanating from the Golden Triangle—although principally in Myanmar—with shipments regularly interrupted by police en route to Malaysia and Indonesia. The UNODC works hard to implement crop substitution programmes, a worthy endeavour to introduce a more viable alternative. But with the recent coup in Myanmar it seems that those programmes have been stalled, at least temporarily. The Thai government, having previously taken a hardline on drugs, has recently decriminalised marijuana in an effort to put the power back into government and legitimate businesses. The backpacker paradise strip of Khao San road in Bangkok now features brightly lit modern shops where you can choose your own pungent blend of marijuana with names such as space queen, super lemon haze, San Fernando Valley, or my favourite—for the name that is—Bruce Banner.
Could this approach work for harder, more problematic drugs like cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth? The jury is still out.
As for Khun Sa’s legacy? I guess the answer is, it depends on who you ask.