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Travelogue
- Thailand
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Thailand
- page 6
03/04/05
I've
been living in an Akha
hill tribe village
northwest of Chiang Rai, Thailand. The hill tribes, called chao khao (mountain
people) by the Thais, are said to have originated in
various parts of China and Southeast Asia. They are a race
apart, a small, tough people who prefer to live in remote highlands. Comprised of at least 10 different tribes scattered throughout southern China,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma and northern Thailand, they include Karen,
Hmong, Akha, Mien or Yao, Lahu, Lisu, Lawa, and a few others, each with
distinctive costumes, crafts and traditions dating back many centuries. Although
many have supposedly been converted to Christianity or Buddhism, most
remain animists at heart.
My
Akha village - I think of it as mine - is
unusual in that it has electricity and offers simple lodgings for guests.
This is due to the efforts of one man, Mr. Apae, an Akha native
and a natural entrepreneur who has single-handedly overcome innumerable obstacles to develop a unique,
low-key tourist trade for his
village.
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I'm told
Apae founded this village himself many years
ago with this idea of accommodating visitors. I'm not aware of any
other hill tribe village anywhere that has done this, at least not
to this extent. Over the years he has built half a dozen simple, thatch-roofed bamboo bungalows
to rent to guests wanting to experience life in a hill tribe village
beyond the one-night stay that most of the packaged trekking tours
include. |
Gradually
Apae earned a good reputation for himself and a moderate, off-the-beaten-track tourist trade for his village. Still, after 14 years this place
remains virtually unknown outside of the nearest large Thai town, Chiang Rai, and even there you have to
more or less luck into it as I did. During the week I've
been here the average number of guests on any given night has been maybe
half a dozen,
mostly adventurous falangs - Europeans and some Americans - with
the occasional Japanese backpacker. There is no question the presence of so many outsiders has
affected the
village people, and yet they are still pure Akha and in many ways, I
believe, still
representative of their singular race.
Whenever
I've encountered hill tribe people in big-town market places around
Thailand, or in their
small villages when I've trekked through, they have usually been stone-faced
and remote, preferring to ignore outsiders. They have good reason
to be wary of
strangers. Over the centuries and continuing up
to present times these people have been harassed, persecuted,
uprooted, relocated, imprisoned, sometimes slaughtered and always treated
as outcasts by the established governments and people of the nations in which
their mountain villages happen to lie.
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Not many years ago some of the hill villages in
this region made extra money growing small crops of
opium-producing poppies. Then government troops came to eradicate
the illicit trade, killing around 3,000 hill tribesmen in the
process and imprisoning as many more. Since then the villagers are
terrified of being associated with drugs of any kind. These
painted signs warn visitors of the zero-tolerance policy in this
village. I heard there is
still a little opium around for the occasional elderly villager
that wants to smoke it discretely, but I never saw it. And if I
happened to get a couple of joints of pot from a visiting falang
- I'm not saying I did, mind you, I'm saying if I did - I'd
have smoked them in the deep forest, never in the village, out of
respect for my hosts. |
In
spite of decades of mistreatment by outsiders these people can be very warm and welcoming once they've
accepted you as a friend, even more so than the Thais, who are
quicker to smile but slower to befriend. Many of the
Akhas I've come to know possess a sharp intellect, a keen
and ready sense of humor, masterful skills in their various arts and
crafts, an innate respect for their natural environment and an ability
to embrace the modern world or to live off the land, depending on what's
available to them at the moment.
As
I mentioned a moment ago, one of the things that makes this particular hill tribe
village unusual is that it has electricity. How that came to be is
a cute story and illustrates the Mr. Apae's gift for getting
things done.
It seems the wife of the King of Thailand, whom the Thais
call the Queen Mother, is fond of sponsoring benevolent and often
successful programs to help her more needful subjects, and she occasionally likes to visit the outpost villages of her
realm. About 5 years ago she made a scheduled stop at Apae's little hamlet.
At the end of her brief appearance Apae, as the
village chief, presented her with a particularly beautiful, handmade Akha shoulder bag as a commemorative gift. Some
time after she departed the queen discovered a note from Apae inside the bag.
The note said, in effect, "Oh, great and noble Queen Mother, won't
you please help our humble village to develop and prosper by helping us
get electrical power lines run up here?"
Two
weeks later Apae received a surprise visit from the head of the regional
electricity commission, who angrily complained, "You should have
applied to us through normal channels for electricity! How dare you go
directly to the Queen Mother! She has instructed us to run lines all the
way back here from the main highway. Ridiculous to do that for such an
insignificant village!" Nevertheless, almost immediately poles were
erected and 10 miles of electrical cable were run straight into Apae's
village, enabling him to offer amenities that even the most adventuresome
tourists appreciate.
I didn't know there was electricity here when I first piled into the
village pick-up truck in Chiang Rai for the bumpy, 45-minute ride to the village.
I must say I was delighted to find it, though, not only for the cold beer it made
possible, but because I can use and recharge my laptop computer here,
making this place very attractive as a writer's haven.
click
thumbnail photos to enlarge...
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I've
been paying 150
Baht a night,
about $4 US, for a simple bamboo and thatch bungalow with en suite
bathroom and a hot shower. There's a small porch overlooking a deep ravine and the opposite
hillside over which the sun rises each morning.
Also
at this end of the village is an open-air
canteen for guests to take their meals, with a limited but sufficient menu and a refrigerator filled with
bottles of drinking water and Chang beer. What more could I ask? Well, I
could ask for good hiking, beautiful waterfalls, friendly natives and a
pretty girl, but there's no need. All that and more was already here
waiting for me when I arrived.
One
of the first people I met was Akha John, a 50-something year old
Brit who has been living here for the past 15 months and has no
intention of leaving. In fact, he has been so completely accepted
by the tribe that they allowed him to buy a bit of land at the
edge of the village and he's about to start building his own
bamboo house there. John doesn't speak either Thai or Akha. He
communicates with the villagers mostly by grunting and
chuckling a lot, and this seems to suffice. Of course the
chief, Apae, speaks very good English (and about 6 other
languages), so anything that needs to be made clear can be by
asking him to translate.
Several other village men and a few of the women are becoming conversant in
English by listening to and practicing with us visitors. The guests'
canteen is the evening
social center for those who want to speak or learn English, or just hang out together. It's a big,
thatch-roofed, wooden platform extending out over a
steep hillside on a perch of tall poles. The canteen features a fine view of the
rain forest across the
ravine, and you can hear the muted rumble of the 3-tiered waterfall just the other side of
next hill.
Across
the adjacent dirt road that is the village's main (and only) street is the
chief's house. His broad porch is another social center where villagers
gather to chat and tell stories. Kids and pet dogs play around
them. Falangs
and villagers alike wander freely between the canteen, Apae's
porch and the rest of the village. There's a tiny general store in
a nearby hut with a limited selection of snacks & drinks.
One
of my favorite Akha men is a wiry fellow they call Apae Noi, not
to be confused with Mr. Apae, the
chief. They just happen to have the same name (all Akha names
begin with the letter A, by the way). To avoid confusion identifying these
two in this village, the smaller Apae became Apae Noi, meaning
"little" or "junior" Apae. Clever, at times hilariously
funny and a skilled craftsman, Apae Noi makes good, sturdy bush
knives of the kind most hill tribe men carry. This is their most
basic and essential tool, a stout, functional, heavy-bladed
machete used every day for chopping bamboo and wood and many other
chores. Whenever Apae Noi can make a few extra knives not needed
by one of his tribesmen, he offers them for sale to the falang
guests at the canteen. My very first evening there I bought a fine
Akha bush knife from him for 450 Baht, bamboo sheath
included. |
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I
spent my first day in the hills hiking 'til it hurt. The big waterfall closest
to the village, which I call #1 because I can't pronounce the
local name for it, is magnificent, by all accounts one of the
prettiest waterfalls in northern Thailand. It's barely a ten
minute walk from the village and I, being a waterfall aficionado, went there first.
But it was too early in the day to linger, so I set off along a
footpath for a hot spring on the banks of the Mae Kok River many
steep, rough kilometers away. |
 |
Hiking
out of the hills to the river wasn't so hard, it
being mostly downhill. It took me less than two hours. Getting back
took a good bit longer and tested my endurance, pushing my
thigh muscles to their limit. The trek gave me a new respect for the
steepness of this terrain and the stamina of the hill tribe people who
literally take it in stride. En route I passed through a quiet, shabby Lahu
village where the residents dutifully ignored me.
Incidentally, the woman in the last photo above, who
has a craft stand at the hot spring, is
not a vampire despite her bloody-looking mouth. The red stain comes from
chewing betel nut, a habit still fairly common among older villagers. The
chew, a messy combination of the betel nut, the green stem of the plant,
and lime, produces a mild intoxicant and helps relieve the pain of
toothache and gum diseases, but it
stains their mouths red and, I gather, rots their teeth over time.
The
hot spring turned out to be pretty and park-like, accessible to cars by a
dirt road running alongside the river. It's a place Thais are wont
to take the
family for a picnic on a Sunday afternoon. As I ate a lunch of
roast chicken & rice in a small, outdoor restaurant, a teenage Thai girl struck up a conversation with me. Her English was pretty
good and I asked her if she had learned it in school. No, she replied, she
had learned English by watching American movies on TV and repeating the words
the actors spoke. She could generally deduce the meaning from the context
of the film and the body language of the actors. If some character said,
"OK, Bob, I'll catch you later," the girl would repeat,
"OK, Bob, I'll catch you later." It seems almost comical, but this young woman spoke better English than most Thais I've met. She
was proud to tell me she had just passed an examination to become an
overseas au pair, someone who hires out to live with a wealthier
family and look after their children. She thought she might be going to
work in America in another 6 months or so, a dream many Thais share but few
achieve. I have
little doubt this sharp girl will make it.
After
the hard, uphill climb back to my village I headed straight for waterfall
#1 where I stripped and dove
into a cool pool of clear water to rinse off the sweat and trail dust.
 
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That
evening Apae Noi brought a guitar to the canteen and I entertained
the villagers and falangs with a few songs. A native woman I'd
heard people call Mama sat near me by the campfire and sang along
with whatever I played. Of course, she had no idea what the words
were or what they meant, but she managed a fairly good imitation
nevertheless. Together we made an unlikely, bi-lingual,
trans-cultural duet. |
 |
After
a couple of strong Chang beers, I started making up songs about the women peddling their crafts. Even
though I had already bought some souvenirs from them during the day, they
tended to be a bit pushy and nagging whenever I passed by their blankets
spread with handmade crafts for sale, always bugging me to buy more. Also, it is customary to
bargain with them for anything you want to buy. This became the gist of my
joking as I made up a silly tune about our daily intercourse. "Come, come, you buy,
you buy one from me. One hundred Baht, 100 Baaaaaht. No, no, I pay 30
Baaaht plenty. No, no, for you 85 Baht, good price. Oh, no, maybe 60 Baht,
sixty. OK, 60
Baaaaht. Buy two now, you buy two only 100 Baaaaaht," and so on. The villagers, especially
the
women, got a kick out of it and joined in the singing and joking. After that, whenever I
passed them during the day they would sing out, "One hundred Baaaht," and
laugh.
 |
The
next day I found my way to a pair of waterfalls about a half
hour's hike away. They each have a name, but I called them #2 and
#3. The latter, reached via a long earthen staircase down a steep
slope, is exceptionally pretty, with a wide pool at its
base surrounded by bamboo, ferns and jungle greenery. IF I had
possessed that mythical joint someone gave me, this is surely
where I would have smoked it.. |
I sat
on a boulder with the water sluicing my bare feet and played my wooden recorder to the accompaniment of the
thundering fall, communing with God and nature, and afterwards remained for a
leisurely picnic. This is my idea of heaven on earth. It just doesn't
get any better.
When
I finally tore myself away and started back up the long slope to the dirt road,
I encountered a Canadian man and we struck up a conversation.
He's living in Pataya, which is Thailand's most notorious sex capital.
A full-time resident married to a Thai woman, he brokers condominiums for a living
(that's condominiums, not condoms). This poor guy
was more stressed out than a New York commuter and complained
constantly about Pataya, the people,
the politics, the over development, the pollution, the poor water supply and so on. He seemed close to a
nervous breakdown and I thought it was good that he was taking a little
time off to get out into the forest. Even though he seemed oblivious to
the beauty of our surroundings and raved on angrily about his life, I
suspect the simple presence of all this quiet, green nature may help
soothe his troubled mind.
As
I neared the village I veered off to try an alternate
trail that seemed like it might lead up towards #1 waterfall. There I found several
of the village women, including Mama, set up to sell their crafts to any tourists or
trekkers that might happen by, but there were no customers that day. We started
joking about my "100 Baht" song. Then, as they prodded me to buy something now, I sang them the tune from the Broadway show,
Annie, paraphrasing "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll buy some
tomorrow," and when I got to the last line, "It's only a daaay
awaaay," they all laughed and sang "tomollow, tomollow!" Of
course, what made it so funny to them was that they hear the excuse,
"I'll buy something tomorrow," from visiting falangs all the
time.
Easy
mark that I am, I
wound up buying something from each one of those women. Their crafts are
beautiful, all made by hand and embarrassingly inexpensive. I had to
bargain with them to avoid appearing foolish, but I did not bargain very
hard. Always I came away knowing I could have gotten whatever I'd just
bought for less money, but I would have taken no pleasure in beating them
down that last 25¢. A quarter makes absolutely no difference in my life,
but the equivalent 10 Baht means a lot to these people. I enjoyed these transactions much more
knowing they had gotten what they consider top dollar out of me for their
wares. From my perspective, most of it would be a steal at double their
initial asking prices.
I was enjoying this place so much I didn't want to
leave. However, I had already reserved a flight to Bali in Indonesia and
the departure date was fast approaching. So I caught a ride back into
Chiang Rai, went to the travel agent there with whom I'd booked the
flight, and had them push the date back a few days. I also emailed a
friend I was scheduled to meet in Chiang Mai, telling him I'd be delayed a
few days. This bought me three more days and four nights in my jungle
paradise and back I went aboard the afternoon pick-up truck.
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That
evening some of the village women introduced me to Asuta outside
the little general store, joking with me that I should marry this
shy hill tribe girl. I'd been noticing her already, a slender,
demure young woman in her early twenties. And while Asuta was too
shy to acknowledge the older women's half serious proposal, neither did
she chastise them for bringing it up. I guess she's been noticing
me, too. |
After
that, she and I smiled at each other a lot and began to chat once in a
while. She doesn't speak much more English than I speak Akha, but where
there's a will there's always a way and I have never found the lack of a common
language an insurmountable obstacle to communication.
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In
the morning I set off for a Yao tribe village way back in the hills, the
probable location of which I surmised
from a rough sketch map with no details, and by asking a few Akha
villagers before I left. They waved an arm towards the west and
indicated it was an hour or two that-a-way. It turned out to be a long, hard slog mostly
uphill, but I enjoyed the walk through the young mountaintop forest.
. |
 |
When
I arrived I found the Yao village to be a colorless, uninteresting
little hamlet with nary a soul in sight. The only ones who took
notice of me were the village dogs, several of which came charging
at me in a pack, barking and snarling viciously. I've found that
aggressive dogs usually back off if I appear to be even more
aggressive, so I ran straight at them and roared out my best king
of the jungle imitation. Fortunately for me, this stopped them.
One mean old son of a bitch tried to work around behind me where
he might get a piece of my ankle when I wasn't looking, but I
faced him down and soon the mongrels retreated to a safe distance.
Still, they kept barking. Although I'd heard occasional human voices
inside some of the huts when I first entered the village, no one
came out to call off the dogs or acknowledge my presence. May they
eat the whole mangy pack and get worms! |
 |
By the time I got back to the #1
waterfall to cool off I was one tired hiker. Late that night I was suddenly awakened by a
sharp, incredibly severe pain in
my thigh. A muscle had cramped up rock-hard and persisted on and off for 20 excruciating
minutes despite my desperate pounding and massaging.
Finally the spasms passed and I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Akhas
have a wonderful sense of humor. Once
you've broken the ice and are relating person to person, joking
with them is easy and lots of fun. The men are particularly fond of
making straight-face jokes, then waiting to see if you got it. They
clearly enjoyed the fact that I could respond in kind, pulling off little
jokes of my own. For example...
As far as I
know all hill tribe people eat dog meat.
It's a necessary part of the diet in most villages, where they're
just barely subsisting and must eat anything they can get just to stay alive - dog,
pig, snake, small fish, squirrels, owls - anything. In
this relatively affluent Akha village they can usually afford
chickens and pigs - some of them raise their own - but they still eat dog simply because they like
it, and because it's cheap. I learned dog meat sells for 40 Baht (about
one US dollar) per kilo, whereas pig meat, pork, costs 100 Baht per kilo.
Now,
the
villagers prefer to keep their dog-eating habit to themselves, knowing that
most Thais and falangs think eating a dog is primitive and
repulsive. This struck me as a perfect opportunity to rib them and so I
started comparing costs of things in the village to the price of dog,
casually at first and with a straight face. When Apae Noi offered to sell
me another of his knives, this one with a sharp point "for sticking
pigs," I complained that if I paid him the 400 Baht he was asking
for the knife I'd have to kill two 5-kilo dogs just to break even. Then I
stared at him stone-faced, trying my damnedest not to smile. He did the
same. Finally, as if on signal, we both cracked up. When the women called me over
to buy something from them and I saw one of the village dogs asleep off to
the side, I asked, "How much for the dog?" Thinking I meant to
buy the dog as a pet, the women said, "Five thousand Baht," and I looked shocked and said,
"No, no, 40 Baht per kilo, and I buy some rice, too," and we all laughed at the
exchange.
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One
evening a big village dog fell asleep on the
cold ashes of the canteen fireplace, providing fuel for a renewed
round of joshing ("Hey, Ajou, got a match?") In truth,
however, the Akhas in this village do not eat their own dogs,
which are pets. When they want dog meat they buy the animal from
another village. |
 |
I tried an Akha massage,
which a few of the women were offering for 100 Baht, but it was poorly done
compared to the professional Thai massages available in the towns &
cities.
Afterwards, some of the women half-joked with me about marrying one of their
daughters, offering me several choices as the girls blushed and giggled, but the consensus in the village
is clearly that I should marry Asuta. She remains bashful, neither
agreeing with nor refuting the idea. To keep things light I suggested I
marry two or three of the girls and have 5 babies with each. This was met
with more laughter and chattering in Akha, so that I could only guess at
the text of the banter.
Again
it was time for me to leave, and again I managed to postpone the
departure. Using Apae's cell phone, which works from the village if he
plugs it into a tall external antenna mounted on the roof of his house, I
called Chiang Rai and cancelled my room reservation at Baan Bua
Guesthouse. This
meant that I would not have a last day in that town as I has originally
planned, but would go
directly to the bus station the next day when I came down from the hills.
My friend was waiting for me in Chiang Mai and my flight to Bali was
non-refundable. I could stay one more day in the Akha village, but no
more.
My
last day there I was going to take it easy and just hang around the
village and #1 waterfall. Then I heard that the
men were cutting a fire break up on the ridge above the village, so I
set out to
join them carrying my big Akha bush knife, figuring to lend a hand and
just sort of be with the guys.
Brush
fires are an annual problem throughout Southeast Asia. This time of year,
as the dry season drags into its last month or so, the land is parched and
the forests catch fire easily. The thick haze
in the countryside that I assumed was automobile-generated smog from the
cities is, in fact, mostly wood smoke from wildfires
burning throughout northern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Burma, mixed with
a haze of natural water vapor and yes, around the bigger towns, a goodly dose
of engine exhaust fumes, the whole held firmly over the land by a prevailing
high pressure system. Since there are no fire brigades in these rural hill
villages, the tribesmen must protect themselves and their crops against
brush fires. The fire
break that the Akha men were cutting that day, a lane through the forest cleared of
vegetation and encircling the village on the surrounding high ridges, is
their first line of defense.
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On
my way out of the village I spotted Asuta sewing in what I took to be
her house on the uphill side of town. We chatted a while and I
learned a little more about her. She's 23 and, she said, the only
Catholic in the town. She referred to the others in this village
as "Christians." She goes into Chiang Rai
every weekend to attend a Catholic church with her sister there.
Asuta's parents are both deceased; she seems to be on her own and
getting along well enough.
Like many of the women here, Asuta sews beautifully. Pictured to
the left is a traditional Akha bag
she made for one of the villagers. The entire pattern is
hand-stitched. |
|
.
|
Again
I set off to find the men cutting the fire break, but only got a
short distance on my way when I met the blonde-haired Dutch woman
I'd seen around the village with her Akha boyfriend. We got to talking
and I learned that back home she was a professional physical
therapist. She found her way to this village during a vacation,
fell in love with one of the men here, and stayed. Now she has
opened the Bamboo Bar up the hill, an idyllic little watering hole
that practically no one goes to because the tourists tend to
congregate at the guesthouse canteen at the lower end of the
village. |
She
also mentioned that there was going to be a dog meat feast that night to reward the men who
were cutting the fire break. I'm sure I could have gotten myself invited,
but while I have no problem with other people eating dog I don't feel
inclined to it myself. This is not due to any high moral position or lack
of curiosity, but because I've been so attached to particular dogs at
times in my life. Unless I were starving I would no sooner eat a dog than a dolphin. Or a
person.
I
searched all over that day but never did
find the trail to the top of the ridge to join the fire break crew. Every
time I doubled back and asked someone the way I got another vague
direction accompanied by a wave of an arm indicating that the trail was
that-a-way. My search took me deep into the rain forest and I spent many happy
hours there just hiking around. I must've discovered a dozen obscure
footpaths and little-used trails that I hadn't seen before.
Using my trusty bush knife I cut
a stout green bamboo walking
stick, strong and lightweight, to help me navigate the rough terrain. I eventually wound up picnicking
high above the #1 waterfall,
having scaled an especially steep, almost ladder-like staircase hacked into
the hillside. Later I found my way out onto the Yao village road. I was so happy
with my life and my situation at that moment that I found myself singing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah
out loud and twirling my bamboo walking stick like a baton as I marched
merrily down the forest lane, butterflies actually dancing before me just
like in a Disney cartoon. Had one of the villagers seen me then I'd have
been in for some hard ribbing at the canteen that evening.
Back in my bungalow
late that afternoon I heard what I thought could only be gunfire - lots of
it! - from the hill above the village. I rushed out, fearing an attack by
Thai army troops or opium warlord bandits, recalling scary stories I'd
heard of how things were not so long ago in these parts. What I saw
instead was a small brush fire sweeping up the hillside. As it heated the
bamboo, the trapped air in the stalk sections exploded with a loud
bang. There was so much of it, it sounded like a small revolution.
My
last evening was much like the others except I brought out my laptop
computer and gave the villagers a "slide show" of the photos I'd
been taking since I got there. It's one thing common to all people everywhere.
Everybody loves to see themselves in a photograph, and the
Akhas were no exception. Afterwards I gave chief Apae a CD onto which I'd
burned all the photos and I made him promise to get prints made in Chiang
Rai to give to each of my "models."
I
chatted with the falangs - a woman
from Israel, a French couple, a Brit, a Jap and two Danes. Akha John and I
discussed village life, Apae Noi sat with us listening to our English. I
flirted a little with Asuta, but not too much. I was leaving.
In
the morning I rode into Chiang Rai in the back of the pick-up truck with a
few other departing guests. Once there Apae offered to
give me a lift to the bus depot.
When we were alone together he talked to
me seriously about marrying Asuta. The village favored the match and he,
as their chief, also approved. It wasn't necessary to say that I, as a rich American, would be a good catch
for any hill tribe woman, and good for the village as a whole were I to
become a part of it. This was not a business proposition. It was
an honest token of the villagers' good opinion of me and I was deeply moved. Asuta, darling of her community,
a favorite of the chief and his wife, and a sweetheart
by any standards, would make any man a fine wife. Apae said he would
build us a house at the edge of the forest, where there's a
view across the valley to the steep-sided hills beyond. It was without a doubt
the
nicest proposal I've ever had and, truth be known, I gave it some thought
and continue to do so.
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With
gratitude and straightforwardness I explained to Apae that even if I do
make it back for a longer stay in his village, which I very much hope to
do, I'm probably not a candidate for getting married
and raising a family there or anywhere else. I said I didn't suppose Asuta was in the
market for just a boyfriend and he concurred. We both agreed she deserves
the real thing and, each in our own way, I believe we both felt some
genuine regret that
I wouldn't be the lucky man to get her. |
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