Saturday Part Four : Extrusion and Exploitation

The last leg of the journey was a trip to see the Hill Tribes - there are lots of different ones including long neck, long ears, black teeth, as well as some less recognisable ones also, including the ones with the women with silver studded hats that try and sell you jewellery and wooden frogs on the Koah San Road.

When we arrived I realised that this place was little more than a refugee camp which contained captive little groups from several different tribes who had fled across the border from China, and Burma.

We walked through their little collection of bamboo huts on stilts, where we were herded towards sad little stalls selling tourist tat.

Then on to the next section where another tribal group gave us a display of village tribal dancing for donations. They were refugees from Burma.

We met another group originally from China; all of the women wore red fluffy neck pieces; moved on to the Black Teeth Tribe who chew addictive betel nuts until their teeth turn black which is supposed to make them more attractive to the men of the village

Finally we were nearly at the end of this uncomfortable experience when I and a couple of others were told that I had not paid to go any further and that to see the "long necks" I would need to pay another 300b.

Now, having already had to shell out that amount for the "optional" boat trip (the other option being to sit in a shack for an hour and a half in the middle of no where whilst everyone else went on the boat trip) I, amongst others, was rather aggrieved.

I asked my guide exactly how much of that money would be going to the tribe themselves for us to go and gawp at them in their pitiful surroundings.... she declined to answer. Oh. none of it then? So i then asked her how she was going prevent me from seeing them, as I had just as much right as anyone else to go to the village as we were not paying the tribes people for entrance. She also couldn't answer, so, with my 300b I stomped over the bridge to the long-neck settlement and put my money straight in their donation box, and went to meet the tribe.

The girls start to wear the rings on their necks and calves

from a very early age, 5 or so, and at 11 they can decide whether to keep them. The neck rings lengthen the neck, but the calf rings don't do the same to the legs. (Shame, my thighs could definitely use some thinning and lengthening!)

I read somewhere that if they chose not to they were cast out of the village, however my grumpy guide said that this is not the case here, but anyway "all the girls chose to follow".

By the time they reach adulthood they can wear as much as 5kg of brass rings around their necks (which they have to keep clean by rubbing them with rice stalks). They even sleep in them, though it is possible for them to remove them.

Apparently the original reason why they wear them is for protection, so that Tigers cannot bite their necks or legs whilst they are out foraging in the jungle. It does not explain the extrusion of the neck though...... (I suppose no one has told these people that tigers have nearly been hunted to extinction because these people's way of life is not many years from extinction itself.)

I bought some lovely little carved bamboo cups that smell gorgeous, and still came away feeling dirty from being a part of exploitation of this minority group. I'd joked about it before, but being part of it was not funny at all.

Three hour drive back to Chiang Mai.