Visiting the Hill Tribes

Among the tourist offerings in northern Thailand and Luang Prabang, Laos are trekking trips and/or visits to hill tribe villages. These are very easy to arrange as in Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang there are numerous shopfront tour operators – you can take your pick of day-long trips or multi-day slogs through the hills and forests.

Trekking doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest and the reports of the young couple who were staying at our guest house in Luang Prabang upon their return from an 8 hour trek who had a close encounter with a bunch of leeches did nothing to whet my enthusiasm. I was also not keen to go visit the hill tribes for a number of reasons.

However, as it turned out, we did have occasion to visit a hill tribe village, an experience that was very interesting and not a little unsettling.

This was part of our two-day boat trip down the Mekong. One of the stops was at a Khamu village on the banks of the Mekong. As we disembarked we were met by two little girls on the river bank. One of the first things I noticed was how they were actually posing for the cameras. Further up the path were a group of young boys who were watching us at least as much as we were looking at them. All of a sudden there was a shout from one of them and they all took off, running down toward the river. As it turned out, they had homed in on the children who had been on our boat and the little French boy spent the entire time of our tour splashing around in the river with his new Khamu friends.

It was a village of children. There were a few adults present, some older grandparents seemed to be keeping themselves out of sight for the most part, but most of the adults were away for the day, tending hillside rice fields. Our guide from the boat told us not to give the children any candy or any money. The boat operator apparently supports the village school.

The children were obviously used to visitors. The children were laughing and prancing around, teenage boys were playing musical instruments, young children caring for even younger children. They were more than just used to visitors, they knew when the cameras were on them and you could see them striking poses. I watched one young girl carrying her baby brother who was poised over the water tap, cupping water in her free hand to drink. She would look around to see if anyone was watching, and then repeat the pose.

I watched another young woman, in her mid to late teens perhaps, again at the communal water tap, taking a - long - shower wearing her bathing sarong. My first thought was, “we’re only going to be here for another 10 minutes, can’t you wait?”, but then, as I stood and watched, I realized I was actually watching a show. Her shower was precisely for the benefit of the tourist cameras. I too snapped a picture and it was only later when I looked at them in larger format that I realized it was indeed the money shot.

I’m glad that we stopped to see the village. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to see the houses they lived in, to get a wee bit of a sense of lives lived. But at the same time, it was a bit surreal, like an enactment of a hill tribe village where the villagers were putting themselves on stage for foreign eyes and cameras. I don’t feel that visiting hill tribe villages as a tourist in that kind of setting adds much to a real understanding of their lives. Au contraire, I found it unsettling, discomforting and voyeuristic, and noticed back on the boat when we were once again underway, there were several quiet conversations going on, where others were voicing their feelings of ambivalence.



In northern Thailand one of the tours that is available and promoted, although we didn't do it, is a visit to see the Long Neck Tribes. The Palaung are a sub-group of the Karen and originally from Burma, although in fairly recent years they have fled across the border to northern Thailand, fleeing from the persecution of the Burmese army. Custom prescribes that girls before puberty begin to wear coils that are augmented until they weigh as much as 11 pounds. The coils force the chin upward while pressing down the collar bones and ribs. The neck is not so much elongated as the collar bone is pushed inward creating the illusion of a longer neck. An estimated 10,000 Thais and foreigners visit the Long Neck villages each year, paying an entrance fee that allows them to photograph and mingle with the smiling, colorfully attired long-necked women and girls. The villages are actually owned by Thai tourist operators who collect the revenues from admission fees.

Various origins of the practice are cited, ranging from protection against tiger attacks to symbols of wealth and status. One myth tells of a beautiful dragon with a long neck that was impregnated by the wind to produce the first Padaung people.

Whatever the source of this whacked out custom, it was thought that if the women are ever to remove these rings, they would not be able to stand up, as their weakened neck muscles would cause them to suffocate. I'm not sure if this is true or not, as I have read of a woman recently who chose to remove her rings as protest when Thai provincial authorities refused to allow her to emigrate to New Zealand. She also wanted to be able to leave the village to visit a nearby Thai town, without being gawked at.

One of the many reasons this whole thing disturbs me, is that the custom was actually dying out among the tribe until they fled for their lives over the Burmese border to the safety of Thailand and the Thai tourism entrepreneurs saw a way to make money from the tourists to go see them. The young girls are enlisted in the practice to meet the tourist demand. The Padaung no long practice agriculture and the men are mostly idle. Because the Long Necks in the tourist villages have no legal status in Thailand, they have no rights of residence, employment, or freedom of movement in Thailand.

Of course there is the usual argument that they are better off now, earning money, than in their impoverished, fearful lives back in Burma, and better off still than tens of thousands of other refugees who have fled the country, but this “either-or” way to frame the debate just bugs me.

Travelers can vote with their baht.