Exploring Amazing Places in Thailand You Won't Believe! On The Road (In Thailand) with Niall and Adrie #14

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Transcript

Niall: 1:26

And then we just stumbled across this.

Adrie: 1:31

I knew we were coming here.

Niall: 1:32

Did you, this is the number one spot I've been most excited to go to. It led to the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, calling the guy who was trying to help the most, calling him a.

1:56

Oh my.

Niall: 2:16

It's uh, first foodie in Shanghai and our last foodie in Thailand and. We are on our way to something that I didn't know we were gonna do, and it's so exciting. I can't wait to tell you about it, but we'll tell you about that in a minute.'cause right now we are, we're about an hour out of Kangri and then we just stumbled across this.

Adrie: 2:36

I knew we were coming here.

Niall: 2:38

Did you? Okay, so we didn't stumble. We came here exactly on time to. To, uh, this stupa and this old wall. What wall, what isn't no sense. It's a stupor. What's the difference between a stupor and a what?

Adrie: 2:59

Oh, well what's a temple?

Niall: 3:01

Ah, see, I gotta write this time, but this is really cool. So on the outside of this, there's five gates and there's an old wall that. It is like with cool brick work, kinda similar to this, and it was built 15th century ad. That's a long time ago. Wait, 15th century ad? It is

Adrie: 3:23

a 16th ad. Oh, major re restoration was conducted. Thank

Niall: 3:28

twice in two minutes.

Adrie: 3:31

Except for the massive time you were wrong.

Niall: 3:35

It is this culture that sets Thailand apart from Vietnam is a big point of difference in culture. They like know there's misong and outside Ang, but there's not much else. Not like this. So it's called wa fra. So this says that apparently there's evidence reviews, two construction episodes. There was a hu consisting of a staircase, a platform, a terrace, a brick floor, and single tiered ceramic tile roof. Uh, I'm no archeologist, as you would know. Why the hell do you know that from this? That is incredible. Then it says it was rebuilt to its original size and form, except that the floor was slightly raised. The rear, the rear wall was en allowed to support the roof weight. There's no roof. How would they know the weight of the roof and the new base of the principle Buddha image is built? I don't know how we know these things as human beings. It's mental, but it looks cool and it's old.

6:34

Oh my dog.

Adrie: 6:44

This a lunar New Year thing. Oh my God. You get that on camera? Yes.

Niall: 6:50

Explain what's been happening today.

Adrie: 6:52

We just keep hearing firecrackers out of nowhere, all over the place.

Niall: 6:56

Like I the last

Adrie: 6:57

couple days where we, this morning at breakfast, we heard the loudest ones for considerable amount of time, like in the middle of the street and now at some random little temple. Fuck sake.

Niall: 7:08

I remember at first you were like, why someone letting off fireworks? I think it's definitely some cultural or religious thing that they're letting off. Yeah. Yeah. Really loud firecrackers.

Adrie: 7:19

Let's go play. That was

Niall: 7:20

terrifying in this nice, peaceful, quiet watch. And then someone's just letting off. And that is, oh, we were over there. That is a temple over there. Yeah. Oh my goodness. We are here now at the Golden Triangle, not in India. There's a golden triangle in India, right?

Adrie: 7:37

Well, we're in Thailand, so No, we're not in India right now. Yeah. We didn't

Niall: 7:40

go to India. Just very quickly. So we're in Thailand. We're at the Golden triangle. What is the golden triangle?

Adrie: 7:45

It's where Thailand lass and Myanmar meet.

Niall: 7:49

That's pretty cool.

Adrie: 7:50

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Niall: 7:51

And we were just in Lao a few months ago. On

Adrie: 7:53

the other side.

Niall: 7:54

On the other side of this is the Mekong River as well, right?

Adrie: 7:57

Yeah. But like we are further down

Niall: 7:59

still crazy. We in

Adrie: 8:00

the tn, this is not

Niall: 8:01

the, this is the Mekong River that flows all the way from, I think, does it start in China? The Ong

Adrie: 8:06

somewhere.

Niall: 8:07

And then goes all the way out to the Ong Delta in Canada. In Canada. I dunno where that came from in Vietnam.

Adrie: 8:15

You come? Yeah. So we're just under the Buddhist butt and we are here where you can see all three countries to, we're currently standing in Thailand and just over the water, that little point is Myanmar. Um, on the map you can see it's really just a bit of a, an insula almost. It's tiny bit. And then across the river, that whole side is glass. It looks like. There's casinos and stuff over there, so maybe it's total speculation, but heavily developed by China would be my guess.

Niall: 9:38

Yeah. I did see on the map it did see a casino.

9:40

Yeah.

Niall: 9:47

So we are at the literal

9:49

golden

Niall: 9:49

triangle

9:51

to be, this must be the closest part.

Niall: 9:55

There you go. So we got Myanmar over there. Now over there in Thailand, right below us, we are at the Great Opium Hall. Not to be confused with the Great Opium House, so much opium around here that there's two museums about opium and the Golden Triangle is a famous place, like a famously known area. Of the three countries where lots of drugs goes through. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Adrie: 10:23

Well, it's got, it's, yeah, got a lot of history, which we're about to learn, which we're going to learn about,

Niall: 10:27

which maybe is why they called it the golden triangle. That little bit, but it's very confusing because that is mostly associated with drugs and that's why the opium den, no, it's not an OPM den the great a hall of op, hall of opium. So let's go around that land about some drugs and I think you get some free opium once you leave. So we haven't had any signs yet. So I assume this was like the tunnels that they used. A recreation of the terms. These all look like faces. Oh, they are faces. Oh my God. That is terrifying. I thought I was just seeing things in the patterns. I like, oh, that looks like faces. It is actual faces. Going up this tunnel with all these scary faces and things on the wall, and there's not been one setting to tell you what this is or what it represents

12:10

or

Niall: 12:11

anything about it. Questionnaire, yeah. There was a QR code for a questionnaire to fill in something you haven't done yet. So we do said this was double the cost of the Opium House. This is the Opium Hall. We've yet to find out why it's double the price, but we hope it's gonna be good.

12:32

It's.

Adrie: 12:36

Represen that the souls destroyed by opening up.

Niall: 12:40

It's open to your interpretation.

Adrie: 12:43

This is put on by the International Narcotics College. I assume it's going to be anti, and

Niall: 12:51

this is real golden trying. Meanwhile, Thailand, Lao, south of, and China and northwest of Vietnam. I loved the drug production comes from. Well, family's really bad. Is that a real person? Oh my God. I thought that was a real child sitting there at first. Yeah. Opium. Was and is super addictive. So in China there was lots and lots of people getting addicted. They wanted to make it illegal to help the country, the East India company wanting to trade it.'cause you make a lot of money.

13:42

Enter the fucking bridge. Yeah.

Niall: 13:43

Then the Brits come in, they mail it Right now we're gonna keep selling. All this tea was involved Somehow. I kind of missed how that was involved, but they sold a lot of Tea. Britain I think got addicted to tea more than opium. It sounded like.

Adrie: 13:56

They were trading opium.

Niall: 14:20

Opium is way worse than I thought it was. The Brits wanting to import it. Make lots of money. And even governments like in Thailand we're like, yeah, we can make a lot of money from drugs, bring it in. But eventually Thailand did say no, and they stopped. They tried to stop opium addiction and the drugs coming into the country and ly they've done a really good job of cutting down all the trees and the opium plants, and they've massively, massively reduced the amount of opium that is produced in Thailand, which now that I know how addictive it is and how bad it is, that's definitely a good thing. This is the number one spot I've been most excited to go to. I never once in my life thought I would ever be here. We only found out yesterday we were coming.

Adrie: 15:06

Yeah.

Niall: 15:07

And this place is one that attracted worldwide attention. Everyone was obsessed with it for weeks, months.

Adrie: 15:17

Yeah.

Niall: 15:18

Yeah. Months. Months

Adrie: 15:19

wait weeks. But. Yeah, sure.

Niall: 15:23

Everyone was obsessed with it. It was all over the news, all over the media. It led to the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, calling the guy who was trying to help the most, calling him a pedo, leading to court cases. And it was also the place where a tie football team, but stuck in a cave and had to be rescued.

Adrie: 15:42

Yeah, I mean, that's the most important thing, not the Elon Musk thing.

Niall: 15:45

I'd never thought in a million years that we would be here, so we are at. Tam Luang, k Ong National Park in Shanghai, Thailand. And we're gonna go up and see the cave, uh, which is the site of one of the most dramatic stories of the modern era, I think. Yeah. How obsessed were you with it?'cause you were very, very obsessed. I watched

Adrie: 16:05

like the news every day and I was just in awe the whole time, like terrified for these poor little boys.

Niall: 16:12

So if you don't remember, you don't want talking about, I don't know where you've been, but I think it was 14 boys. It was a Tide football team that got taken into a cave by their coach, and then the water levels rose suddenly and they got trapped way deep in the cave and couldn't get out. Everyone pretty much thought they wouldn't be able to survive. They had no food, minimal water, and complete darkness. So we got a new friend we've been tuned to get on this truck and 20,

16:39

yeah, okay. Okay.

Niall: 16:41

To put money in the tip box, but nobody tells us how much to put in. The tip box comes out, it's 20. That's quite easy. Do, and now we're gonna get driven up to the cave, I presume. So these kids were stuck in a cave, couldn't get out. It was pretty dire. It didn't seem like they were gonna be able to get out. I listened to a podcast about it recently and it was the way the cave, like they had to go under rocks and be brought out one at a time through water. No caving, no diving experience, no caving experience. And eventually they decided the best thing to do was sedate them, which is dangerous in itself. So they had to send in an anes. Theologist, that's how you say that. At, sedate them one at a time and then have an expert caver take them out through these narrow passageways filled with water and get them all out. And I mean, I remember at the time we really didn't think they would survive. How could they survive? But therefore, so long and every single one of them got out and survived to an incredible story. I mean, even we heard it from Vietnam. This is like remote rural Thailand. Never thought once in a million years that we would. Actually be visiting this place. So it's pretty cool and it's obviously really cool because it had a happy ending. I think because of all the attention, it's been a bit. Done up in a good way. 13 boys, one coach, and they went over two kilometers deep into the cave. So we are here. They went all the way along there. They're here 2,315 meals from the cave engines. Is this what they brought the out in? Did you ever think you would come here? No. How many elbows do you think you spent in total watching this on the TV as it was unfolding? Oh, my hundred I remember. Yeah.

Adrie: 20:23

Watched stuff. We that it Good? Yeah. Met a lot.

Niall: 20:29

So 13 boys were rescued, one coach and they went 2.3 kilometers deep into the cave. We were allowed to go. How far? 500 meters maybe. Yeah. If that. There's no fun, but it's stunning nonetheless, and pretty awesome that all those boys are died. So I was wrong. There was one person who unfortunately did pass away because of this rescue mission and was this soldier here from the Thai army, right? He passed away delivering the oxygen tanks so they could get these 13 little bulls, as they called them. What legend

Adrie: 21:13

the next day.

Niall: 21:25

No microphones. If you hear any quality in the difference right now, it's because microphone's coming from the camera. We have to take our microphone, but we could still film private art exhibit, and it's one of the most visually stunning art exhibits, temples in all the time. And it predicted, not even finish it. So what's that one? The champion,

Adrie: 21:51

the one in Barcelona that. What's it called again? We normally just finished, I can't remember the name

Niall: 21:57

right now. Oh my goodness. But you know the one we're talking about in Barcelona. Well, this is predicted to be finished in 20, once they come back for the finishing 14 Ideal. We see how that is, but this is amazing. Repetitive actually Makes sense. Pretty good. Yeah, maybe. And then of course we.

Adrie: 23:43

That's why I.

Niall: 24:25

So this one doesn't have any minerals on it. So I think this one is unfinished and it's gonna look like that eventually.