This is how things have been shipped on this river for many years
7 January 2010, 09:00The first time I went to the north of Thailand in 2006, I visited Chiang Saen and was amazed by this port. It’s just stairs. And there are narrow planks for the porters to traverse with heavy loads on their backs. But this is the way things have been done here for centuries. It doesn’t matter that it’s slow and precarious.
This last time I went to northern Thailand in 2008, they had built a modern port about 100 meters downstream from this spot. It’s so much easier to drive the whole truck to the boat — which is now parked at a dock, I might add.
~Jonathan