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Published: July 17th 2009
Long Necked Lady
The red stuff in her mouth isn't blood but the colour from the betel nut. It looks horrible and is particularly bad when they spit it out at your feet!After leaving rainy Pai we headed South going to the far West of Thailand where it meets the Burmsese border and the town of Mae Hong Son. The roads here are very windy and the roads along here are famous for having 1864 turns up and down the mountains which makes for a fun time in a small bus where the driver struggles to get up and neglets to use his brakes coming back down. We had to laugh when we passed a truck carrying a huge digger that had got stuck and couldn't get up the road, who knows how he would have got out of that one.
Our main reason for wanting to visit this town was to go and visit the refugee village which is home to the Long Necked ladies or Kayan hill tribe. The people who make up this tribe are Burmese refugees who have skipped over the border to escape persecution from their repressing military rulers (the Juntra). A small break off sub group from the Kayan are called the Padaung and it was this tribe that we were most interested to see, not only to see the unusual way they wear their jewellery
but also to experience another hill tribe way of life.
The majority of ladies here wear a combination of large silver and bronze rings around their necks, arms and legs and a new one is added as soon as last one becomes comfortable, these can sometimes weigh up to 22kg but most carry around 5kg around their necks. This gives them a kind stretched neck look which is supposed to be attractive but we thought it looked a bit gross if we're honest. If it wasn't for most of them smiling away you could be forgiven for thinking it was actually some sort of torture device for the men to keep their wives in check! For us Westerners this seems a very strange thing to do and a source of fascination from the number of people who visit here each year but to them it just their way of expressing themselves, a bit like we do with tattoos, clothing and jewellery but in a more dramatic way.
The villages are quite near to the town of Mae Hong Son and easily accessible so we were expecting to see many other tourists on route to the village as we
went along on our bike. Tours to the Long Necked Hill tribes are big business here but we didn't want to go in the group so headed off on our own with our map to visit the nearest village to town which was the village of Hoy Sen Thao. It wasn't as easy to find as we had thought but we persevered along the road which went from tarmac to rock at 100m intervals passing and overtaking working elephants as we went which is quite cool. We actually then drove past the village which can only be seen in the distance from the road and only realised our mistake when we asked a random lady cutting up bamboo if we'd gone wrong and she pointed in the direction we'd come from. We had to go along a small walking track, dumped our bike when it would take us no futher then walked about a km through the bushes to the river and wondered what to do next because the village was on the other side of the river.
We crossed in a little boat brought across for us and here was our first contact with the Paduang people. We
walked up from the river bank to be greeted by four men standing around a sheltered bamboo hut looking very unhappy. We put on our brightest smiles (our way to get out of any bad situation!) and said hello in our best Thai. There was no response from the other men but our friendly boat driver said "250, 250 that's 500B for 2 ok" we understood this to mean that this was the entrance fee (which we'd been told was to be expected in LP), so we paid our way and entered the village. Apparently the villagers don't see much of this money as it all goes to the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), which is a party set up to establish an independent Kayan state in Myanmar. It seems a bit of a shame that the villagers don't see much of this money when people come to see them but they do though have a much better life in Thailand compared to what they had escaped from in Burma so they seem quite happy with this set up.
Whilst we always feel a bit uncomfortable visiting the hill tribes because it can sometimes seem like they are exhibits
in a zoo, the ladies here are really keen to welcome people, have photos taken and generally make you feel at home. This is mainly becuase they make their bread and butter from selling their handicrafts to people like us and it's rumoured that some can make up to 3,000B (£54) in a good week. This may not seem like much but when you think that the average wage in Thailand is just £2.70 a day it seems like a fortune.
While at the village we were surprised that we were the only white people here, not that that's a bad thing because it gave us free reign to chat to the ladies who mostly spoke excellent english and to take photos of them as we pleased. We bumped into a man at one point who was busy videoing his mother and 2 children for a karoke video he was making! We chatted to him for a while and learnt that they speak such good english because a group of English people worked in the village for a year teaching the children and obviously taught the older villagers too. He also said that they hardly get any tourists at
this time of year which makes life quite hard when their main income is from selling the handicrafts. As refugees they receive no help from the Thai government so are completely on their own when it comes to paying for healthcare etc and they do struggle.
It was jaw dropping to see these ladies carrying out their daily lives wearing these rings on their necks which looked really uncomfortable. It never fails to amaze us that in this day and age there really are groups out there who still live by their traditional way of lives refusing to be influenced by the mainsream Western way of life. Coming from a place like England you cannot imagine that people live like this until you see it for yourselves and it really does open our eyes each and every time we experience things like this.. it's what we came away to see and we never tire of learning about different ways of life and cultures.
Further down the village we met the karoke man's grandmother who was the grand old age of 82. It was really remarkable what this lady had been through in her life time... colonisation, two world
wars, dictatorships the bearing of many children and who knows she might have even met George Orwell! She showed us a postcard that she was very proud to be on so we brought this to remember the nice old lady we met in the Long Necked Hill Tribe village.
We spent a few hours in the village walking up and down the little dirt track that was the main high street, we really didn't want to be one of those people who rushes in, takes a 100 photos and leaves with no interaction at all so tried to take our time and speak to as many people as we could to try to learn from them. We purchased a few little bits then our nice boat man took us to the other side leaving the village in peace. We were so glad we got to go at this time of year because we can only imagine what a circus it must be in the peak months when 100's of groups descend at once all jostling to get their photos taken. We're sure the ladies would much prefer it to be like this because they would make lots of money
but for us it was a perfect way to see these unique people.
During the evenings here it rained.. a lot.. which meant we didn't do a whole lot except read in our room! To be honest there isn't a lot to do here in the evenings but we had to feel sorry for the hill tribe ladies who trekked into town each evening to sell their beautiful wares then had to go home again an hour later when the heavens opened. The town itself is quite pretty too surrounded on all sides by small mountains which looks quite mysterious cloaked in clouds for the time we were there. Next to our guesthouse is a small lake that makes for a nice walk round when the rain went away so we managed to do that and also visited the local market to stock up on fruit for our journey the following day. It was here that Sophie found 3 tiny orphaned kittens, she begged Dale to be able to keep them and find a good home but he flatly refused leaving Sophie to sulk and feel guilty about them for the remainder of the evening! Kittens in backpacks sounded
like such a nice idea to her and she couldn't see the problem!
After seeing the long necked ladies we decided to head further south to the town of Mae Sot, it was here that we were hoping to get to experience another highlight which our friends Luke & Lil had told us about when they visited in January.. sadly though luck was not on our side...
The journey to Mae Sot was not one we'd want to experience again! First you have to get a bus to the town of Mae Sariang which is a 3 hour bus ride.. easy enough but then comes the hard part... a 6 hour journey in a sawngthaew to Mae Sot. The most we'd ever spent on the hard bench seats in the back of one of these was 3 hours so 6 was really pushing us to our limit but it wasn't actually that bad. Well, it was bad that it rained the whole way and the driver refused to put down the side rain covers, add to that the rain that came in from the front of the cab.. oh and the baby that was sick everywhere because it's
mum gave it a massive bottle of Lactosoy and a bag of donuts but apart from that the 6 hours went quite quickly! There are regular stops along this road by the police checking everyones identity cards for any illegal Burmese Refugees and you pass all the refugee camps on the way which makes the journey fairly interesting but also quite sad to see how large the camps are containing all these people who just can't stay in their country any longer.
We'd been given the name of a good guesthouse to stay in which was right by the bus station so walked there in the pouring rain and checked in. We were fed up of being room bound so donned our rain gear and headed out to see what a Burmese border town was like... quite interesting we would say! The town is a real mix of Burmese and Thai, some in their traditional sarongs and all very friendly too. It's a bit of a rough & ready town with a great market selling all kinds of weird & wonderful things like skinned frogs, eels and baby turtles but we bypassed all these and headed for Tescos! We
Long Necked Ladies
coming back from work had our first taste of Burmese cooking that evening in the local Burmese curry house and it was gorgous so we will look forward to more of that when we hopefully got to Burma early on next year.
The following day we wanted to head straight out to the Highland Gibbon Sanctuary where our friends had worked and told us it was a real highlight. We had dreams of playing with the Gibbons, learning about them and generally helping out at a wonderful place set up by an American & Thai couple. We had a bit of a bad experience getting there after we couldn't find the right place to catch our ride there, then we got on the wrong sawngthaew which took us to a village in the middle of nowhere where noone spoke english and they had no idea where we needed to go (this was after the driver enthusiastically nodding that he knew when we got on!), we got on another sawngthaew got dropped off with the police who could speak english and helped us get on the right sawngthaew so eventually after 3 hours in what should have been a 45 minute journey we arrived
at the sanctuary in the pouring rain not feeling our happiest after spending a fortune getting here.
For a bit of history here, we'd been emailing the sancuary for 6 months prior to our arrival, we'd also tried to telephone but both with no response. Our friends had experienced the same problems so had just turned up and luckily there had been spaces so we thought we'd do the same. At the end of the day we figured that if we had no response then other people must be in the same situation....
So we walked up the drive, entered the gates and were greeted by a quite rude lady who asked if we had an appointment. "Err no" we said and explained the above to her. She was not that happy that we'd just turned up and neither were we when she said they were fully booked with volunteers until the 15th July so we'd have to go! Both speechless we asked how other people had managed to book in and she told us of course they'd emailed the correct email address... but how did they get it!?! Having come all this way we asked if we
could stay a while, she said yes but quite obviously didn't want us to and just marched off and left us to it.
Having had such a bad morning getting there we were both a bit upset at this turn of events so had a quick look at the gibbons and left to return to town. We got on the right sawngthaew back and were both so shocked and disappointed we just didn't know what to do with ourselves, add to that it was pouring down with rain and we were carrying our heavy bags so we both felt a bit low. We had some lunch then plodded to the bus station to shelter and decide what to do. After much deliberation we decided to stay one more night in Mae Sot but when we returned to the guesthouse it was full and we just couldn't be bothered to find another so at that point we made up our minds to leave, go to Bangkok then head to Kanchanaburi to see another one of our must dos...
After such a great time visiting the hill tribes it was a real blow to us to be so let down
& disappointed by not being able to work with the gibbons. More than anything we were upset that we'd been treated so rudely after having such a bad time getting there but these things happen, and it's probably the only thing we really haven't had go our way since we've been away so we have to look on the bright side. We may well also come back up this way later in the year so plan to make contact and try again so all is not lost.. and we have the right email address now too!!
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Louise
non-member comment
That's pretty impressive.