Go here

http://www.gt-rider.com/thailand-motorcycle-forum/chiang-mai-thoed-thai-return-t7059.html

for some info on Thoed Thai.

http://www.tourismthailand.org/festival-event/grand-content-6817.html

Date : 15 – 21 March 2010
Venue : Anantara Golden Triangle Resort, Chiang Rai

A blessing ceremony will be held before the opening match where monks sprinkle holy water over both players and animals to ensure a successful tournament.  In addition, a parade of northern traditional-style dancers, hill-tribe villagers in traditional costume, elephant spirit men (Khru Ba Yai), colourfully decorated pachyderms and teams holding up their respective country flags will kick off the weeklong competition held on the banks of the Ruak River which divides Thailand from Burma.

During the first five years of the tournament, the event took place in the Royal seaside town of Hua Hin before moving to the native home of elephants in 2006 – the Golden Triangle. The tournament was introduced to Thailand in 2001 by Anantara Resorts and is a charitable event that raises money for the country’s National Elephant Institute in Lampang, northern Thailand.

In just seven years the King’s Cup Elephant Polo Tournament has gone from a small two-day event with six teams into a week-long extravaganza, which in 2009 featured 12 teams from four continents encompassing 40 players from at least 15 countries.

Through its own Elephant Camp located within the grounds of the Anantara Resort Golden Triangle, the property’s focus on the future of Thailand’s pachyderm population forms an integral part of the resort’s operations. On an ongoing basis, resident Elephant Camp Director, John Roberts, works closely with the Thai government’s Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang to develop Anantara’s camp as an elephant sanctuary.

To date the tournament has raised over US$200,000 for the National Elephant Institute, which provides medical care, sustenance, employment, and mahout training to Thailand’s elephant population. In 2008 the funds were used to run the custom build ambulance that was donated at the opening ceremony of the most recent tournament. It is estimated that Thailand has around 2,500 domesticated elephants and 1,500 wild elephants. This is down from an elephant population of around 50,000 in 1950 and 100,000 in 1900.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) fully endorses the King’s Cup Elephant Polo tournament, having identified it as one of the country’s prime annual special events. It will take place in the grounds of Anantara Resort Golden Triangle, and spectator entrance is free.

For more information on King’s Cup Elephant Polo, please visit www.anantaraelephantpolo.com
Anantara Resort Golden Triangle is located 60km north of Chiang Rai’s international airport.
For enquiries and reservations, please call + 66 (0) 5378 4084 or + 66 (0) 2 477 0760
or email infogt@anantara.com  For more information please visit www.anantara.com

22 – 28 FEBRUARY 2010.

Phrae Province, Phrae Provincial Administration Organization, Cho Hae Municipality, Cho Hae Temple in cooperate with related organizations will organize the remarkable religious festival “Wai Phrathat Cho Hae Mueng Phrae Hae Tungluang” during 22 – 28 February, 2010. The festival aims at preserving Phrae important old tradition, promoting the tourism of Phrae, and bringing tourists to Phrae Province all this year round. Importantly, it is an annual festival that many travelers who were born in the year of the tiger are waiting to pay homage to the Phrathat (Cho Hae Pagoda) as it is a pagoda of that year.

Mr. Wisoot Buachoom, Director, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Phrae Office, stated that the tourism of Phrae has been growing in a good direction since a travel season at the end of last year. This year Phrae Province was promoted as a year of a commune of people who were born in the year of tiger. In the past, Phrae was perceived as a passage way to other provinces. After there were extreme boost of the tourism in the southern area of the north, Phrae Nan Uttaradit became recognized by many visitors.

The Director also added that “Wai Phrathat Cho Hae Mueng Phrae Hae Tungluang” is an annual festival. This year the festival will be held during 22 – 28 February, 2010 at Cho Hae Temple, Mueng District, Phrae. The activities in the festival will start on 22 February with the parades of 8 districts of Phrae Province. The following days, there will be Tak Bart (give food offerings to a Buddhist monk), to do a merit in Buddhist style, Vien Tien (walk with lighted candles in hand clockwise round a temple). Moreover, there will be Tes Maha Chat Contest, the cultural activities such as Sabadchai drum contest as well as various local traditional performances.

In addition, around Cho Hae temple area, there are many interesting tourist attractions such as Cho Hae Pagoda, Lanna style Buddhist sanctuary, Tun Jai Buddha image, holy spring, ancient bell etc.

For more information: TAT Phrae Office (Tel: 0 5452 1118, 0 5452 1127), Cho Hae Temple (Tel: 0 5459 9209, 0 5459 9073-4)

Wednesday, 17 February 2010 KNG

http://kachinnews.com/News/China-worried-over-losing-investments-in-Burma-in-event-of-civil-war.html

China is overtly anxious of losing its huge investments in neighbouring military-ruled Burma with civil war clouds looming between the regime and ethnic armed groups, said sources close to Chinese officials.

Chinese state-owned China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) invests for the construction of problematic Irrawaddy Myitsone hydropower project in Kachin State, northern Burma.

Sources close to China’s southwestern Yunnan province government, said China’s current investment in Burma is in the region of over 600 billion dollars. It is the biggest foreign investor in Burma.

China has invested mainly in energy and mining sectors in Burma controlled by the junta as well as in business interests of ethnic armed groups along the border.

It stands to reason that China does not want strife along the Burma border, contiguous to its Yunnan province between the junta and ethnic armed groups, who have rejected the junta-proposed plans to disarm, Yunnan government sources said.

China has advised the junta to avoid military conflicts as far as possible with the border-based ethnic rebels– Wa, Kachin and Shan, who rejected transforming their armed-wings to the Burmese Army-controlled Border Guard Force, border-based Chinese security sources added.

Major ethnic armed groups based on the border like the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Mongla-based National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) have rejected the contentious junta-proposed BGF.

Insiders from ethnic armed-groups’ said, the junta has come up with a fresh deadline at the end of February, the third so far, for transforming all ethnic armed groups to the Burmese Army controlled BGF.

Border-based Chinese security sources said, Burmese military leaders will swiftly put into action, plans to disintegrate and breakup the ethnic armed groups by pouring in huge amounts of money before the countrywide elections this year.

On February 9, there was a departmental meeting of the Yunnan government, which discussed war, which seems inevitable between the Burmese Army and the two main ethnic armed groups—UWSA and KIO.

Northern Trip” is one of The 2nd Bangkok Motorbike Festival 2010′s activities which start from 24-29 January 2009. It is a new touch of tourism using motorcycle. To feel “Sense of Journey through the long road distance around 1,100 kilometers started from Chiangmai to Bangkok.

For more info please go here

http://www.bangkokmotorbikefestival.com/2010J/

October 1949 and deep in the hills of Chinese Yunnan, a battle had been raging for days. The 93rd Division of the Kuomintang (KMT) Army, cut off from defeated Chinese Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek’s main force, is fighting a fierce rearguard action against Chairman Mao’s all conquering Red Army. Between the 93rd and safety stands the Yuan Jiang River.

‘We lost thousands of soldiers and civilians trying to get across that river,’ says 55-year-old ex-KMT colonel Somboon Aimvitayakun, ‘but we made it across and escaped into Burma.’ Although Somboon wasn’t even born at that time, his father, Jang Pong Gow, who went on to become a KMT general, was there, a close adviser to commanding officer General Tuan Shi-wen. ‘This battle was our proudest moment,’ says Somboon.

To read the full story go to
www.cnntraveller.com/2009/07/14/swords-into-teacups/

News story by Andrew Spooner
By Andrew Spooner
www.andrewspooner.net/

For more info on Doi Mae Salong go to
www.doi-mae-salong.com/

Asia Times

By Daniel Allen
12 September 2009

BEIJING – At Kunming’s long-distance bus station, a sleeper bus crammed with Chinese laborers edges toward the exit, en-route to the Laotian capital of Vientiane. Despite the prospect of an uncomfortable 40-hour journey ahead, this group of wiry, chain-smoking men is buoyed by the expectation of a reasonable salary and a chance to take China’s economic miracle southward. “Laos is poor and dirty,” says one. “But we have many friends there already. We can make money and help make Laos more like China.”

The resource-rich Golden Triangle area of northern Laos, Thailand and Myanmar is no stranger to Chinese influence. Just as the Chin Haw – Han and Hui Chinese from Yunnan province – first arrived in Laos in the 19th century looking to get fat off the land, so a new wave of migrants from Yunnan and further afield is now making a beeline for the same region, looking to take advantage of opportunities thrown up by modern China’s long and powerful economic arm.

For the full story please go to Asia Times: China in Laos: Counting the cost of progress

New York Times

By THOMAS FULLER
September 30, 2009
DOI CHANG MOOB, Thailand — For more than half a century heroin has been carried over the jungle-shrouded hills here, the first leg of a journey that delivers the drugs to cities as far off as Sydney and Tokyo. But antinarcotics officials are rubbing their eyes at the spectacle they are now witnessing: a flood of heroin and methamphetamine is spilling out of Myanmar as traffickers slash their inventories in a panicked sell-off

It’s a clearance sale,” said Pornthep Eamprapai, director of the northern branch of the Thai Office of Narcotics Control, who has nearly three decades of experience tracking illicit drugs from Myanmar. “Some dealers at the border are buying on credit. They don’t even need to pay in cash. This is the first time I’ve seen this.”

For the full story please go to The New York Times: Crackdown Spurs a Heroin Clearance Sale in Southeast Asia

The Irrawaddy

War and refugees will remain a fact of life in Burma as long as the root causes of conflict in the country’s borderlands remain unaddressed.

The rout of the ethnic Kokang militia, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, in northern Burma in late August has brought into stark relief what millions of people live with in Burma every day: conflict between the central state and non-state armed militias. For decades, clashes between the Burmese regime’s army and its myriad enemies have been forcing people into hiding or across borders. What is different about the recent fighting is that it involved China—not usually a country that tolerates refugees from Burma or instability along its borders.

The cause of the latest outbreak of hostilities is the decision of Burma’s ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to pressure cease-fire groups to transform their armies into border security guard forces before next year’s election. Under the SPDC plan, which was first proposed in April, the militias would be split up into battalions consisting of 326 soldiers, mostly from ethnic militias, but with a number of Burmese government army troops and officers. The deadline for a response to the plan was June, with training to begin in October.

For full story please go to The Irrawaddy Peace in Burma