Hill tribesThe solo rider travels deep into mountain country in search of a good face
Bangkok Post dd. 5 januari 2006
LLOYD SULLIVAN
There are about a million “mountain people” living in Thailand as of the 2004 census, ethnic minorities collectively known as hill tribes. Karen, the people from whom I got a roofing lesson in Mae Hong Son Province, make up about 47 percent of the total, Hmong, Lisu, Akha, Lahu and Yao a majority of the balance.
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This Akha house perched on the side of
a hill in Chiang Rai Province uses thatch
for roofing, unlike the Karen practice of
using leaves.
They’re different peoples with different customs, languages and styles of native dress, but they share a common migration history. Most moved into Thailand in the 19th and early 20th centuries from China, some like the Karen through Burma, others like the Hmong through Laos. All settled in the mountainous regions of Thailand which predominate in the north and in the west.
Up until about thirty years ago hill tribes were predominantly subsistence farmers, practicing what was known as “shifting agriculture,” that ancient practice of clearing forest for agricultural crops, planting and harvesting repeatedly until the soil was exhausted, and then moving on, or shifting, to new forest land and starting over.
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The bronze statue of King Mengrai the
Great stands in a memorial park in
Chiang Rai city.
The problem with shifting agriculture in the late 20th century, however, was there’s nowhere left for people to shift to. The world was pretty much filled up. Since the '70s most hill tribe farmers have worked land that is part of a network of development projects sponsored by the Crown. Some tribes, like the Hmong, own land themselves. But whether they’re landlords or tenants, nobody is getting rich tilling high country soil and hill tribes more often than not stand on the lowest rungs of the Thai socio-economic ladder.
Even so, mountain people are popular with tourists by virtue of their age-old customs and costumes, and their lifestyles so very different from our own. In a globalised world with cultural distinctions fast finding their way into the common melting pot, people who’ve retained their ancient traditions have a magnetic effect on the traveller and the tourist alike. I felt a considerable tug myself.
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A farmer, using a long stick as a kind of
whip, has her hands full with a buffalo
cow who won’t do as she is directed.
This contest of wills lasted a while,
and in the end the human prevailed.
Shortly after breakfast, I stopped at the front desk of my hotel to change some money. Having discovered some months back that hill tribe people like to get paid for standing in front the camera, I wanted enough 10-baht coins for a full day of photography. The clerk obliged me with two cellophane sleeves, 10 coins per sleeve, newly minted. They looked beautiful, silver and gold in colour, bright, shiny, and somehow more valuable because of it. I hoped to exchange the full lot before the sun went down.
Following the local Chiang Rai custom, I began the morning by paying my respects at the statue of King Mengrai, the founder of Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and the Lanna Kingdom. It’s a handsome life-size bronze, black in colour, of a warrior king on a tall stone pedestal, a sword at his hip. Of course it isn’t a true likeness. King Mengrai ruled the Lanna Kingdom in the 13th century and there are no coins from that period bearing the king’s likeness, no busts that have survived the centuries, nothing to go on. What Mengrai the Great really looked like is certainly a mystery. But the sculptor and his sponsors must have had a vision of the king and, oddly, they depicted him as looking rather androgynous, I thought, a mother-father figure rather than a conqueror. Certainly, he was not sculpted as a Thai Genghis Khan. He doesn’t look to have a ruthless bone in his body.
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This Akha farmer takes a photo break
and decides to light one up.
Yes, he rolls his own.
After a visit to the Hill Tribe Museum where I learned about the Long-neck Karen tourist scam I wrote about some weeks back, I set out for Highway 1130, north of Mae Chan. The winding mountain road runs west through primarily Akha country and I intended to take it to the junction of Highway 1234, then onto Ban Sam Yaek where I’d turn north and head up toward the Kham River.
The road was little travelled making it easy to stop and take photos without getting off the bike; just pull over to the edge of the road, turn the engine off, tilt it over on the side stand and starting shooting.
Early on, I encountered a woman herding her buffaloes out of one pasture into another using a long stick as a kind of whip. One cow was reluctant to do as she was bid and it was amusing to sit there and watch this contest of wills, the stout farm woman in her rubber boots working like a border collie to chase the old cow down, the cow zigging and zagging, full of defiance. I was trying to compose the scene through my viewfinder but it was moving away from me too fast. One moment they were in one field, click, click, and then across the road, click, click, into the other field, the buffaloes quickly disappearing into the brush along an irrigation ditch. I doubted I got much of it in focus.
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The farmer’s wife may or may not smoke
cigarettes, but she evidently enjoys
her betel nut.
I encountered less frenetic scenes in the kilometres ahead, mostly farmers working in distant fields, but I didn’t have a telephoto lens and getting closer to them on rutted foot paths would have been difficult on my road bike loaded down with gear. And there was another thing, too, something I hadn’t really thought of before: privacy infringement, this riding my motorcycle up a dirt track right into somebody’s personal life. All at once, I became sensible about it. How would I feel, I thought, if tourists from another galaxy _ or even this galaxy come to that _ suddenly appeared out of nowhere, cameras dangling from their necks, pockets filled with five dollar bills and started taking my picture?
Frankly, it troubled me. Initially, I’d had this idea of rolling into a village and playing Santa Claus with my 10-baht coins, but I began to doubt the propriety of the scheme. If I should chance to meet someone along the road, that was one thing. The road was public. But a village, even the most humble, is home to those who live there. If my only business with the residents was to record their living conditions on my memory chip, maybe I had no business there at all. What is it we find so fascinating about people living on the hard edge anyway? I decided to stick to the roads for the time being and see what turned up.
As it happened, it wasn’t a bad plan. Highway 1234 took me right through a good sized Akha village. A couple of farmers, a man and his wife, were coming down the road toward me, tools in hand. They were wearing everyday work clothes not native dress, but they still looked very colourful. I pulled over quickly about fifty metres away and waited. When they were within speaking distance I asked them if I could take their pictures. They were amenable. I was still astride my motorcycle and I gestured for them to come closer. “Khun doo dee,” I told them (you look good). Nothing wrong with taking photographs of interesting-looking people provided they like the idea as much as you do.
I paid them up front. This not only surprised them, but made them partners in my little project. I snapped away, chatting them up in my rudimentary Thai, not sure they even understood me. But it didn’t really matter, my intentions were clear.
When I got a couple of shots I felt were keepers I showed them to my subjects on the camera’s LCD screen, as always. We had ourselves a little laugh. “Dee chai mai,” (good, are they not?) I asked them.
“Dee”, they answered (good). I couldn’t ask for better.
Copyright 2005 Lloyd Sullivan.