Word: opiumeators
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...down, and then clamp down on, the sex and drugs that have titillated and lured the wrong kind of visitors?but to no avail. The newest approach is a mingling of high and low culture in Chiang Rai province's royally sponsored Mae Fah Luang Foundation's Hall of Opium. There is a certain brilliance to marketing the infamy of the Golden Triangle. This is one of those rare nether regions that lives up to the swashbuckling image that its name evokes. Highways crisscrossing Chiang Rai province are still frequently bottlenecked by police checkpoints set up to foil smugglers...
...Today, there are few living witnesses to the devastating effects of smoking opium, the resin of the same poppy plants from which heroin is derived. In the early 1950s, newly communist China took draconian steps to rid its population of addicts, but the vice lingered for another decade in the expatriate-Chinese communities of Southeast Asia. Thailand was the last place in the world with licensed opium dens. In 1959 those licenses were revoked; the Heng Lak Hung on Bangkok's Charoeng Krung Road?said to be the world's largest opium den, with more than 5,000 users...
...past few years, however, aficionados of Asian art and antiquities have rediscovered the dens' often delightfully ornate accoutrements?pipes, oil lamps, pipe bowls, opium trays and beds. When curators began gathering artifacts for the Hall of Opium, some of the best pieces were found in the Thai Excise Department. "Luckily, department officials in charge of the destruction of the opium paraphernalia kept the most beautiful pipes they confiscated in 1959," explains Charles Mehl, a former Peace Corps volunteer and longtime resident of Thailand. (Mehl is head of research at the new museum, which was designed by Thai interior design firm...
...Hall of Opium uses a multimedia approach to trace the history of opium from highly valued ingredient in the pharmacopoeia of the ancients to the scourge of addiction that brought China to its knees in the 19th and 20th centuries. There is a re-creation of a British East India Company clipper ship's hold and its cargo of opium from India destined for the South China coast and a reproduction of a typical 19th century opium den, where a visitor can take himself through the opium smoker's paces (sans opium, of course). Patrons, according to this life-size...
...defeat, Karzai's authority doesn't extend far beyond the gates of the palace in Kabul where he's permanently guarded by U.S. personnel. Much of Afghanistan has been carved up among rival warlords, and even Karzai's own Defense Minister has refused to disband his private militias. The opium trade and banditry remain staple economic activities; the Taliban and al-Qaeda are regrouping and expanding their activity both in the countryside and in the capital; and U.S. and coalition forces come under fire almost every...