Unexpected Moments
There are places in the world where beauty defies expectation. Sometimes they are found unexpectedly in the smallest of things or the most unpredictable moments. When I awoke at 5:30 in the morning in my bed not far from the junction where northern Thailand, Laos and Burma meet I rolled over and looked out the window of my hotel room. I was physically quite close to a place romantically and once nephariously called the Golden Triangle. It was place of lore, once known as the central hub of heroin trafficking across a remote section of South East Asia. Now it was a region filled with economic development. The jungle trails and combat fatigue clad mercenary armies have been replaced by casinos and Chinese tourists. The men who once commanded heroin movement from their jungle bases now run multimillion dollar gambling empires. The traffickers are still there, they are just woven into the fabric of economic development and their camouflaged clothing has been replaced by a veil o