opium

The area where Thailand, Laos and Burma (Myanmar) all converge is known as the Golden Triangle, and until recently, it was more or less the center of the world's opium production. It also happens to be the part of the world I am currently in. Being here, and having a keen interest in both drugs and their role in history and global politics, I had to pay a visit to the imposing Opium Hall (museum) up near the borders.

For some inexplicable reason, the entrance to the museum sits on the opposite side of a mountain from the museum itself. Shortly after paying your astronomical entrance fee of 300 Baht (US$10), you discover the reason behind the hefty charge; this is one of the most futuristic and fancy museums I've ever set foot in. Anyway, you're probably wondering how you get from the entrance to the museum on the other side of the mountain. The answer, you walk through the mountain in a 130 meter tunnel. This is not your ordinary, everyday tunnel; it creates a mood for whole museum experience with a dusky atmosphere, neon blue track lighting, creepy space music, and textured walls that are sculpted to depict various body parts swirling around in smoke. The bodies in the walls become progressively more wasted away until the end of the tunnel shows only skeletons amidst the curling haze.

Once you've made it through the tunnel, you watch a short film (one of at least 12 you will see throughout your visit) about the museum itself. Of course, I'm a fan of any museum exhibit about the museum the exhibit is in. After leaving the giant auditorium, you enter a planetarium-like room where you are treated to a second audio-visual presentation on the ancient history of opium and it's medicinal uses. This was fairly interesting.

Perhaps my favorite attribute of the museum is its comprehensive treatment of the role the opium trade has played in shaping world events throughout the past three hundred years. They start at the beginning. So, logically (or maybe slightly confusingly) the next exhibit concerns the British tea trade and features a huge mock sailing ship. While the connection was not completely obvious at first, the exhibits and signs go on to explain how and why the British began pedalling opium they grew in India in order to pay for their tea in China. It was interesting to see a museum take the time to set up the historical context of an event, rather than just saying "here's what happened". Having laid the foundation, the Opium Wars between the British and Chinese areexplained with more flashy movies, and even some very lifelike wax figures.

After this, you move down the second floor, where you spend a couple of rooms learning about and seeing artifacts of the practice of Asian opium smoking. My favorite informational panel was titled "How to Smoke Opium". All joking aside, it was cool to see the ritualistic method of lying down on a bed and smoking yourself into a white haze. There are a number of different tools that are needed, including lamps, pipes, dampers, trays, pins, scrapers, pillows, boxes, etc. Each tool is not only explained in detail, but there are also displays of all of the paraphenalia, ranging from the poor man's simple bamboo pipe, to the wealthy man's ornate porcelain, wood, or bronze smoking utensils. This was maybe my favorite part of the museum.

The display that comes next on the history of tea, the tea plant, tea drinking vessels, and different types of tea was as out of place as it sounds like it would be.

At this point, we arrived at the early twentieth century, when the western coutries changed their minds and decided they didn't like this drug at all, and were going to outlaw it (what the Chinese had tried to do a hundred years earlier). This also coincided with opium production moving into this part of southeast Asia. Again, in fully comprehensive style, the displays demonstrate how the Thai government had come to depend on taxes from opium sales for about 10% of its annual revenue. Thus, when opium supplies were cut during WWII, they coerced hill tribe ethnic minorities of the mountainous areas of northern Thailand, Laos and Burma to produce opium on a large scale. (The hill tribe people had already been producing medicinal opium on a small scale for hundreds of years.) As a cash crop that easily grows in the mountain environment, poppies provided a means of well being for the hill tribe people. This trend continued into the 1970's and beyond, when the illicit global trade in southeast Asian opiates really took off. One interesting piece of this area of the museum was a five minute movie that in no uncertain terms points the finger at the CIA as the main culprit in funding the illicit drug trade. It was good to see a museum come right out and say this, as mainstream American channels of information tend to neglect this well-accepted fact.

Thailand, of course is not the place we think of today when we consider opium production. There is a reason for this other than chance. The next exhibit talks about Thailand's successful crop replacement program which has helped farmers find other crops to make their livelihood with. It also briefly points out that the United States, since 1984, has had a policy of ignoring crop replacement schemes and using military style eradication programs. A comparison of Thailand versus Colombia (or Afghanistan) shows how well that policy works.

The final exhibit deals with the social costs of opiate use, and has mostly the kind of stuff we've all seen before in middle school health class videos and primetime made for TV movies. The one interesting part was a display on drug eradication approaches that gave equal time to supply reduction, demand reduction, legalization, and harm reduction approaches. There are also plenty of heartbreaking stories about people whose lives have been (negatively) affected by opiate addiction. The glass floor lets you view a scary prison-like room where people lay on beds shooting up and/or smoking opium.

Finally, the museum provides a large bright white "Reflection Hall" with soft new age music, benches, and columns painted with inspiring quotes.