Northern Hill Tribes
Chiang Mai, Thailand - Day 7
At about 8am we were picked up for our second excursion, a trip to visit a hill tribe. Northern Thailand still houses several hill tribes, nestled high in the mountains. Many of these tribes have migrated from Myanmar and Laos. I found it interesting that several tribes are not ancient, but moved to their current location a recently as thirty years ago and that they are not necessarily against modernization. They send their children off to Thai schools and they can decide to carry on the hill tribe tradition or move to the city. Sometimes they choose a mix, like our guide Winai and our driver Goh. He was from a hill tribe and has a farm, but he also gives these tours. Our guide made note that some things about hill tribes are staying the same - like farming, language, and religion - but some things are changing. At even the most remote location we went to, a Karen tribe, they had vehicles and electricity. Each tribe has its own language but communicate in standard Thai to each other. Speaking of language, our guide said that he is trying very hard to learn English because it's not only important in Thailand's tourism economy, but because of all the knowledge and information on the internet that he would then have access to. Also, it doesn't sound like Thai's overdub American movies in the Thai language. This is because the Thai language is a little more wordy so the subtitles run longer than when the actor is speaking which he says ruins movies for him. We had heard it was impolite to ask about the King of Thailand (even though there are huge billboards of him everywhere), but our guide told us that the hill tribes used to grow and sell opium as a way to make money. To fix two problems, the King of Thailand assisted the hill tribes in growing vegetables and built an infrastructure to accommodate the processing, packaging, testing, and shipping of these goods around Thailand. We saw a lot of 'The Kings Project.' We saw the testing center and were able to step inside and see a processing center for one of the tribes. At one moment got to converse with this older tribesman who was just blown away that he was talking with a couple from the other side of the world. In addition to the villages, we ate a local lunch and visited a place where a tribe was making fried banana candies and chips. We finished the tour off at Wat Phrathat Doi Kham.
