Chiang Rai has always been the biggest tourist town in northern Thailand after Chiang Mai, if for no other reason than that they have similar names. However, I can't help but like it much more than Chiang Mai: it's smaller, quieter, and the tourist ghetto is more or less confined to one street, which our guest house (a bargain at 180B or GBP2.50 for a twin room with en suite), is well away from, next door to Chiang Rai's most important temple, Wat Phra Keow.

Chiang Rai is also the closest large town to the 'Golden Triangle' of legend, where the borders of Thailand, Burma and Laos meet: a notorious opium-growing area of the seventies and eighties. The drug trade has been all but stamped out in Thailand now, and the Golden Triangle nothing more than a stopping point for tourists, but Chiang Rai is still a good jumping-off point for Burma and Laos. This afternoon Chris and I took a bus to Mae Sai, the northernmost town in Thailand and a Delboy paradise of market traders from across the border in Burma.

In Ayutthaya, we met an Irishman who was flying into Burma after Thailand, and I rather envied him. Burma stands in our way between Thailand and India, but the military junta that has run the country has closed all its land borders: only the Thai border is open, and even then only for day-trippers. Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's democratically elected president, has urged tourists not to visit Burma, but I'm afraid curiosity got the better of me and this afternoon Chris and I paid our US$5 'entry fee' and crossed over to the dark side.

The time in Tachileik, the Burmese town across the border from Mae Sai, is 30 minutes behind Thai time, but it might as well be 30 years behind: the country (whose military government has renamed it Myanmar - I prefer the old name and will use it in my blog) is poor, dusty, and something like what I imagine India might be like. I can't give any report on the political situation in the country as I spent less than 3 hours there (more than long enough), but I was surprised not to encounter any large pictures of members of the junta or any other outward sign of their rule.

On our return to Mae Sai, I had an insight on what Prawat, the Lao monk I met in Chiang Mai, might think of Thailand: it's clean, safe, effecient and prosperous. Everyone, particularly those of us who are too young to have known the Soviet bloc, ought to visit a military dictatorship at least once in their lives.