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Hi everyone,
We are delighted to announce a new guest blokker onour site, Andrew Bond, who is a travel writer living in Thailand. This is his first of hopefully MANY more postings to come.
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Visiting the Hill tribe villages of Northern Thailand
Northern Thailand is home to several minority groups, collectively called the Hill Tribes, and they form an important part of the tourism appeal here. Each group has their own distinctive dress, language and customs but there is one common thread among them – they all lead simple, poor peasant lives and this makes them a human zoo for busloads of visitors to gawp at.
Of course, this can be economically uplifting for them and they have no choice than to sell their dignity. On the positive site it is a chance for them to sell their handicrafts and interract with the rest of the world but the truth is they are up there in the mountains – where every house is perched uncomfortably on a slope – because they would rather be left alone.
Villages that are close to major tourist parks, such as Doi Suithep and Doi inthanon are the front buffer against tourist and the most diluted, as their people work the menial jobs in the parks and tourist facilities, but to see more genuine villages you need to go trekking, where the only way to get there is on foot. Even so, they’ve seen hundreds of backpackers stomp carelessly through their village and they’ve learnt to just get on with their lives and pretend these intruders just aren’t there.
On my travels around Northern Thailand I’ve had the priviledge to visit hill tribe villages that few foreigners ever go. For this reason they can be genuninely curious about you and almost welcoming and friendly, which is something the hill tribes aren’t as good at as the Thai.
If you live here and get to know people they will take you to their villages and one of the easiest to get in with are the Akha, who are among the most downtrodden of the lot and are accepting of any outsiders that might be of help to them. The younger generation find their way into the cities and can be found hawking at the night market in their distinctive headdress or working in massage shops.
So, having befriended a young lively girl after months and months going to the same charity run place where she works, I offered to take her to see her family in the Mae Tang area. I turned up on Saturday morning and was greeted by an excited Mae (her name) and several of her friends and cousins who were coming along for the ride. We stopped at the market in Mai Malai to buy some food and 10kg of rice and, after following the road to the river, turned off onto a dirt road that wound up into a muddy village that got poorer the higher we climbed up the hillside.
Her mother, father and two younger siblings lived (existed is a better term) in a tiny ‘long house’ that looked like it was a temporary bamboo shelter, but very much their home. It was no more than 6m long and 3m wide with a dirt floor on the right and a simple bamboo platform, 1 foot off the ground to the left, on which everyone presumably slept. A corner had been closed off for privacy, a few dirty rag clothes hung on the walls and a small cooking fire occupied the other corner.
They owned nothing, save for a machete, some battered pots and eating utensils. The only footwear I saw were some flip flops and the most sophisticated thing that they had was a long drop toilet outhouse with concrete floor and a hose providing running water.
Up the hill beside them was a church. It was empty but looked well kept and new and although modest it was by far the most modern and expensive structure in the whole village. Everyone in this corner of the village could easily be accomodated here in comfort, but it was reserved for Sunday service and special occassions.
Missionaries have done some good work here uplifting the poor but many feel they are simply taking advantage of vulnerable communities and replacing their culture with a religious one.
One thing that was very Akha is their unique giant swing which is constructed deftly from three long bendy tree stems and stands about 10m tall. It’s a part of an annual ceremony but kids play on it all year.
Mae and her cousins cooked a rough gourd and I was treated as the guest of honor in this modest place, meals are about the only comfort and perhaps the most important midday activity. All sorts of strangers came and went, arriving with a cackle of activity and bearing all sorts of strange herbs, weeds, vegetables and such.
The food was awful but I ate it, and the others chomped away as they chatted. It was unusual to be sitting there with such poor people who had less disposable income each year than the money I had spent on my fancy camera. They looked poor and acted poor and ignorant but they were survivors who knew nothing else and although living on the most subsistent level, almost like hunter gatherers and animals, showed little discontent.
These people has learnt to put up with the situation, it had always been tough like this for them so they were indifferent. Keeping themselves sheltered and fed seemed to be the only real goal and activity. I couldn’t stay much longer so I left them and went for a walk. It was too uncomfortable.
Later in the day we went back to Chiang Mai, Mae bubbly with excitement for seeing her family. The family were grateful for the food we had bought (a month of rice supply) and me feeling a little more humbled and altruistic to these poor people.
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