Craning your neck with refugees
Trip Start
Sep 19, 2002
1
109
129
Trip End
Sep 22, 2003
Mae Hong Song,
Thailand
Monday, July 7, 2003
6th July - Dam our guide for the day and teller of corny jokes, drove us out to the Karen village just outside of Mae Hong Song.
Long necked Karen
There are a few villages in the area but this has 3 different tribes in it. The tour cost 6 pounds each but we had to pay 250baht (3 pounds seventy five) to the entrance of the village. There is some debate over what happens to this fee but Dam assured us that it goes towards schooling, medical care and facilities as well as wages for the refugees. Of course, as with anything relying on tourism, this season they are hardly being paid at all. They have many days without any tourists whearas last year in the high season they had as many as 50 per day. The reason for coming here was purely to see the Long Necked Karen, or Paduang tribe. These women wear heavy brass coils around their necks permanently which squash the collar bones and ribs resulting in them looking like they have elongated necks. Contrary to popular myth, they can take these off if they want without any problems (other than financial as they have to pay a fair amount for this special skill). There are various legends about why they wear them but the most popular is so that tigers cannot take them away by their necks! Another tribe there, although far fewer, were the long eared Karens. Yes, you guessed it, they have long ears. Well large holes actually, some that you could put a cardboard toilet roll holder through! They also wore lots of silver coins and beads and the brass rings around their knees. And lastly, the red Karen tribe, who go about with no tops on but cover up for the tourists.If you are thinking that this sounds like a bit of a zoo, so did we.
Long necked Karen girl weaving
The ladies tell us though that they don't mind having their pictures taken as it is part of their income and they get offended if you don't take it. All the brass rings and coloured scarves are to make them more beautiful so they actually want their pictures taken. Many of the people in the village have been their for many years since fleeing Burma when fighting over independence broke out. They miss their homes and families who stayed but don't want to return to a country where they have no money at all and are scared of the military. These people are very lucky. In the normal refugee camps poverty and fighting is rife and the local Thai people (and sometimes military / police) attack, imprison, and often kill them. From the Thai point of view, they have enough people in poverty already without the 2 millions (current) refugees from Burma alone. As an example of one of the many problems, the refugees are given free charcoal to stop deforestation. Instead, they sell this and continue to cut the trees down!The Thai's are also a bit miffed that they've brought in various diseases that were wiped out long ago in Thailand. To try and resolve this a bit, the government has installed proper outside enclosed toilets away from the living area to try and stop the spread of disease a bit. We still met several young children who had lost parents recently through malaria though and we had to put loads of insect repellent on ourselves.After lunch (our cheapest yet at 29p for both of us!!) we visited a Lishu village where they are refugees from Tibet originally. They wear VERY brightly embroidered pantaloons and skirts and also turquoise and magenta tabards. They also wear a towel on their head constantly through fear of catching a chill if they take it off. Here we saw one of the many royal family projects - a solar panel powered TV screen for remote teaching in the school!! A bit like the school of the air in Australia for rural children.
Other than the villages we visited a waterfall and a cave of huge carp that have religious significance and are regularly worshipped. It was on our way here that we had an incident. We approached a cross roads (of sorts) and saw a young boy on a motorbike come out of the junction. There was much squealing of brakes and the young boy disappeared down the side of the car with a scrape and a bump. However he got up and picked his bike up and was on his way in the blink of an eye with only his pride hideously wounded.
7th July - Took a long walk out to an arts and crafts institute on the outskirts of town. When we got there however, there were a few people sat about making Burmese style conical hats and a few looms in another room and a small sales area. It looks like someone has tried to do something good and it hasn't quite come off. Similarly with the river area where we walked back. It looked like there was some heavy duty landscaping down a few years back and the walls of the walkway are made of marble but everything is very overgrown and the water dirty and full of rubbish. It's been really hot and sticky today and we've had to stay in a lot to avoid the really heavy rain. We've also realised that our brains are starting to give up so we've resorted to crosswords and scrabble games from the paper. Also it's been over 9 months and we are finally getting bored of packing and re-packing. Not bad going eh?
