Thailand, Chiang Mai: Long-Necked Ladies

After a long 14 hour overnight train ride from Bangkok we arrived in Chiang Mai. The journey was a lot of fun, but it felt like we were riding a rollercoaster the entire time, as the train carriages tended to sway back and forth on the tracks. This made it very difficult to sleep; just as each of us was about to nod off in our beds, we were woken up by the train jerking to one side or by the feeling that the train had left the tracks over a small rise in the railroad. We reckon that during the night, we each woke up in our little compartments every one or two hours. Despite the continual interruption in our sleep, the beds provided in the train carriage were pretty comfortable, and we were able to at least lie down and relax most of the journey.

The scenery during the journey evolved from a flat to hilly dry forest which was mostly burnt by local villagers still using the good ole agricultural techniques called "slash and burn". This caused the entire sky to be presented as a haze due to all of the smoke in the atmosphere. For those of you keeping up with our journals (well done you!), you will remember our reference to this farming method in our Kanchanaburi, Thailand journal entry. All of northern Thailand seems to follow this same logic and therefore it has been awhile since we have seen a blue sky.

Making curry paste from scratch is easy

Upon arrival at the Chiang Mai railway station, we rang one of the owners of Spicythai Backpackers, our hostel, to pick us up from the station. One of the best things we did in Thailand was to invest a little money into a prepaid SIM card for a mobile phone; it has come in extremely handy in the country. Fifteen minutes after making the call, we were met by a young local Thai named Hnum, who was very easy to speak to with his nearly impeccable English. He drove us back to the hostel and on the way, we had a nice chat with him about our travels to date and our plans for Chiang Mai.

Spicythai is located "a little outside" the old city area of Chiang Mai. It is a 20 minute walk from the old city or a quick tuk-tuk journey into the main part of town. The building in which the hostel is housed used to be an Australian embassy and is situated in what seemed to be a very wealthy residential village with many large two and three storey detached houses with ample front and back yards. The main road running perpendicular to the village had many nice and trendy coffee shops, restaurants, bars and internet cafes that seemed to be utilised more by Thais than "farangs" (foreigners, i.e. us) and so the area was a nice one to base ourselves in for a few days.

The organisation of many tours and treks was offered by the people running Spicythai. What interested us most was to see some of the hilltribes living in the area, as they will eventually "modernise" themselves as Thailand continues its economical growth. Hnum has a tour guide licence and offered to drive us north of the city to see a few different hilltribes and how they live. Once we signed up for that, we enquired about a Thai cooking class and we signed up for one of those as well. Many other treks were offered, including elephant trekking, but since we have spent a lot of time in Borneo trekking and since we went on an elephant trek at Koh Chang, we gave those a miss. With the forest generally burnt to a cinder and the sky so hazy, it wasn't too hard to decide against trekking in Chiang Mai.

You may be asking yourselves what is so special about Chiang Mai. We are trying to rack our brains on this while writing this journal entry - just kidding. The city holds a special place in the Thai people's hearts; it is a city with an amazing traditional heritage running deep into the sands of time, and it is a city with its own beautiful cultural personality, blessed with much majestic beauty in the surrounding countryside. Of course, we had to envisage the last bit due to the smokey skies, but in all seriousness, the city is so charming and the people themselves are an unforgettable part of it.

If you like souvenir shopping, this is a great place for you to visit, as there were plenty of opportunities to look at and purchase handicrafts made of silk, silver and wood. Along with all of this, there is a wide variety of accommodation, restaurants and entertainment all working together to make Chiang Mai a prime tourist attraction, catering to backpackers and other types of tourists. Aside from all of the shopping, eating, drinking and trekking, Chiang Mai is a temple city to rival Bangkok. There are over 300 temples in Chiang Mai, and this number roughly matches the number of temples in Thailand's capital. Imagine walking through the old city of Chiang Mai and seeing a temple every time you turn a corner (it made us think of bumping into pubs on every corner in London, but hasn't made us homesick yet)!

During our first day in Chiang Mai, we decided to visit a local wat (temple) in order to start crossing them off our list. We opted for one of the temples outside the old city called Wat U-Mong. This is a forest and cave wat in the foothills located on the west side of the city, near Chiang Mai University. Wat U-Mong is known for its grotesque concrete fasting Buddha image and hundreds of Buddhist proverbs displayed in English and Thai posted on trees throughout its grounds. It also has brick tunnels underneath the large temple stupa (a pointed temple that looks like an upside-down ice cream cone) that house many Buddha statues and sacred relics and that are accessible to the public.

To get to Wat U-Mong, we decided to walk as it didn't look very far on the map. Have we mentioned that the Thais are notorious for not drawing maps to scale? If not, then "Thais are notorious for not drawing maps to scale". If we did mention it, then we would like to remind you that "Thais are notorious for not drawing maps to scale". An anticipated fifteen minute walk ended up taking about 45 minutes but we were in no hurry that day and hadn't made any other firm plans. The path to the temple was also quite enjoyable as we were able to wander through local markets and along various side streets on the outskirts of the city.

The old temple was large with a tall stupa sitting on top of a wide brick base and is surrounded by many trees that seemed to be alive with cicadas; the noise these little flying beetles made was deafening. At the base of the stupa, two openings led to the tunnels mentioned previously. Adjacent to the temple were a few small houses for the monks living on the temple grounds. All of the monks we have met in southeast Asia have been extremely friendly and it was interesting to see how some of these monks lived. For example, we passed several bright orange cloths hanging on clotheslines between trees, these being the monks' laundry hanging out to dry.

We won't bore you with details about all 300 temples in Chiang Mai, mostly because we only made it to five in the time we were there. There were a couple of other key temples besides Wat U-Mong which are a must-see for anyone travelling to the city. Wat Phra Singh is located within the city walls and dates back to 1345. This temple offers an example of classic northern Thai style architecture and houses the Phra Singh Buddha, a highly venerated image transferred from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai many years ago. Another temple within the city walls is Wat Chedi Luang, which was founded in 1401 and is a massive structure that stands out prominently against a beating red sun. An earthquake damaged this temple in the 16th century, so now only two-thirds of it remains, but it is still an archaeological beauty.

With only a few days left on our Thai visa, we wanted to soak up as much Thai culture as possible before moving on to Laos, and we chose a good way to do this, by seeing two Thai films - we are experts now on standing up before a film to honour the King (not Elvis, if you remember from our Bangkok journal). The first one's title is translated as "Haunting Me" and was a very camp take on a ghost story. We didn't know much about the film going into it, but it was quite fitting looking back at the ladyboy attacks we have withstood in the country (Dan also got his hair cut by a ladyboy a couple of hours before the film). The film was about a group of four old men dressed as women running an apartment building, who end up burying a corpse they find in order to hide a murder. The corpse comes back to life along with another corpse, and they both wreak havoc on the living. The comedic style was along the lines of "Shaun of the Dead" and there were many laughs in the cinema, by us and the Thais in attendance.

"Bodyguard 2" was not a sequel to the Whitney Houston film from the 1990's; instead this film was a big-budget blockbuster Thai action/comedy which we both thoroughly enjoyed. It had all of the qualities of a great Hollywood blockbuster and this is one we would definitely give 'two thumbs up'. There is a funny story behind this film - we were both very eager to see the new film "300" and when Kyle tried to look up the film times on the internet (free internet usage at Spicythai was great!), he saw film showtimes displayed. Everything on the website was in Thai except the numbers displaying the times, and so we assumed the film was on. When we got to the cinema, however, the staff informed us that the film wouldn't open until the following day, and that this was clearly displayed on their website. Guess we need to brush up on our Thai the next time we do any cinema planning in Thailand on the internet!

Thai food is a favourite food to both of us, and it seemed very fitting to learn how to cook the delicious food we had been eating for the past few weeks. We were booked onto the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, which is led by a man who moonlights as one of those TV programme cooks. The school is very professionally run and we even took home cookbooks including the dishes from each day of the 5-day course. We only booked ourselves onto one day, as we are on a tight time and money budget, but we figured once we understood some of the basic techniques we could apply them to all of the dishes. For those friends and family who will receive visits in the US this summer, be sure to let us know if you want Thai food on the menu... you buy the ingredients and we will shop for them and cook for you!

Making curry paste from scratch is easy. We learned how to do this with penang curry paste and then we used our homemade curry paste to cook a tantalising penang curry with pork. After we cooked the dish, we got to eat it! The other four dishes we cooked and ate during the day included a fried fish dish with chopped chili and vegetable dressing, chiang mai chicken curry, sweet and sour stir-fried vegetables, and a spicy glass noodle salad with minced pork and veggies. We finished off the day receiving instruction on how to make sticky black rice with coconut cream, and even though we didn't get to make this one from scratch due to time constraints, we were able to taste what one of the instructors had prepared earlier in the morning. We ate so much food and all of it was delicious.

During the day, many memorable events occurred, but the two that we want to remember most are (a) the nearly blind Canadian guy with his telescopic lens connected to his extremely thick eyeglasses, and (b) a really friendly American woman named Mary who is living in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. The Canadian guy, bless him, was struggling to see what was going on at the front of the classroom and therefore he had a magnifying lens secured to his glasses giving him near Superman-like vision. The instructor started passing around dry ingredients for the curry paste so that everyone could touch and smell them, and when Dan handed Captain Canada a glass bowl full of cardamon pots, CC didn't adjust his lens in time and the bowl went crashing to the floor, smashing into pieces and completely stopping the cooking demonstration. The poor guy was very embarrassed, but we think Dan was even more embarrassed as it sort of appeared as though Dan had dropped the bowl! For the second memorable event, we had a great conversation with Mary about her life in the Marshall Islands on two-year working contracts, whereby she has been living on a small mile-long island in the middle of a tropical paradise for the past five years. Tempting, indeed...

Exploring the hilltribes in northern Thailand is an activity which will change very much over the next few years, with the existing bamboo and straw houses evolving into wooden and brick structures as the hilltribes modernise with the rest of the country and lose their traditional way of life. It was, therefore, great for us to be able to see how some of the hilltribes live today, and how they have been living for many, many years. We had a day out of Chiang Mai to visit the tribes, and we were escorted by Hnum to visit members of the Karen, Lahu, Hmong and Palong tribes.

The journey in Hnum's car was nice and comfortable on flat stretches of road as he had the air conditioning blowing in our faces. However, he had to switch the a/c off in order to climb some of the steep mountain roads and for much of the journey we were sweating bullets in his car. Two other people had joined us for the trip, an American from New York and a Canadian from Toronto, both of whom were nice enough to be with for the day. The first stop on our tour was to visit the most unusual tribe of the day, one of the Padaung subgroups of the Karen tribe. You may have seen pictures of "long-necked" ladies with many coiled rings around their necks, causing them to appear stretched to unnatural lengths.

The majority of the Karen people are found in Myanmar (Burma), but a significant number of them can be found in Thailand, and form by far the largest of the major tribes of northern Thailand with as many as 280,000 in the country. The Padaung subgroups make up less than 40,000 Karens in total and the specific tribes with these special ladies numbers around 7,000 people. We learned that the Karens are a heterogenous mix of different tribes with slightly similar cultures, but each of the many sections of this large ethnic group have their own style of dress and language. Karens can be found living both in the mountains and on the plains, and like most Thai hilltribes, live mostly in the provinces of Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Sorn and Chiang Rai. This tribe, again like many other tribes in Thailand, live in bamboo houses raised on stilts, beneath which live their domestic animals (pigs, chickens and buffaloes). The people live off the land and practice different agricultural techniques including irrigation of rice paddy fields.

Karen women are noted for their skill in weaving, which is done on a back-strap loom. Many of the women in the hilltribes help their families by produce hand-crafted clothing and other apparel which is sold on to tourists, all of which is made in bold and bright colours such as red and blue. The men also contribute by producing musical instruments, animal bells, unique tobacco pipes and numerous other crafted items. Despite the contributions made by the Karen tribes, they live in Thailand with an uncertain legal status in the border area to Myanmar, in villages set up to display them to tourists willing to pay money in order to admire their particular body modification, which consists of coiling lengths of brass around the necks of the women.

The women of the tribe wear ornaments known as neck rings which are brass coils heated in order to shape them and place them around the ladies' necks; they are first applied to young girls when they are about five or six years old. Each coil is replaced with longer coils as the weight of the brass pushes down the collar bone and compresses the rib cage. As more rings are added, the neck begins to lengthen, but the neck is not "stretched"; rather, the collarbone and vertebrae are squashed downwards causing the lengthened look of the neck. Some of the early anthropologist ideas as to why these ladies wear the coils include a belief that the coils would protect the women from tiger bites, or that they would protect women from becoming slaves by making them less attractive to other tribes. It has also been suggested that the coils give the ladies resemblance to a dragon, an important figure in their tribal folklore.

Even though the origin of the tradition is not known, today's Kayan women acknowledge these ideas but usually say their purpose for wearing the rings is for a cultural identity (one associated with beauty). The rings, once on, are seldom removed, as it is a somewhat lengthy procedure. Contrary to popular belief, the women do not suffocate if the rings are removed and their heads do not fall to the side without the supporting rings; many women have the rings removed for medical examinations and their heads are supported by their necks just fine. Having said that, some basic movements or activities are difficult for the ladies due to the constrictive nature of the rings. As a female gets older, more rings in the coil will be added and therefore women will generally have about 20 or more rings around her neck. You may notice in our photo album that the long-necked ladies also have coiled rings around their wrists and ankles. These are added to provide balance as the heavy weight around their neck can cause them to topple over if they do not have something on their other appendages to counterbalance themselves.

Most of Padaung tribe members are animists, but about 10 percent are Buddhists. Now, the number of Christians is rapidly increasing due to the success of Roman Catholic missionaries who are visiting the hilltribes trying to convert tribe members to Christianity. We couldn't quite comprehend how many of these people could be Christians, yet still make animal sacrifices to the spirits for good health and bountiful harvests. Perhaps it would be better to leave the tribes to their traditional ways, to preserve their unique way of life and avoid what must be massive confusion for them.

There were also Lahu tribe members located in the village we visited. There are approximately 25,000 Lahus now living in similar areas of Thailand to the Karens, and four subgroups exist: Black, Red, Yellow and She-Leh. Despite agriculture, handicrafts provide a means of living for the Lahus and some of the finest baskets made in all of Thailand are produced by these people. Lahu men produce excellent crossbows, musical instruments and other items made of wood, bamboo or rattan. Lahu women are skilled in weaving cloth, both on back-strap and foot-treadle looms, producing delicate patchwork trims for garments and unusual embroidery work. The most distinctive costumes are worn by the Black Lahu subgroup within this tribe; they wear a black cloak with diagonal cream stripes and bold yellow and red decorations on the top of their sleeves. The Red Lahu women wear black trousers with white edging and vivid sleeves of broad red and blue stripes. All the other Lahu tribe subgroups have supplemented their traditional costumes with a sarong and Thai-style shirt.

The next village we visited was an hour away and the drive was through the beautiful mountains. Just before we reached the village, we stopped at a lookout point which gave us a sweeping view of the valley. Hnum told us that he grew up in a village in the valley and he used to walk about five hours from his village to a neighbouring village, up and down very steep paths in the side of the mountain. When we arrived at the village, we saw many people busily getting on with their daily routine, and this included many naked and dirty children running around playing games with each other or chasing their animals.

The Hmong tribe is divided in two sub-groups, the White and the Blue. In Thailand, there are probably about 60,000 Hmong people settled in villages throughout a wide area in the north; unlike the Karens, this tribe has originated mostly from southwestern China. One difference we immediately spotted with this tribe was the style of houses in which the members lived. Hmong houses sit right on the ground and are not built on stilts similar to other hilltribes. However, the main floor of their houses is not at ground level, but rests upon a kind of above-ground basement or root cellar that they use for food storage. For a long time, the Hmong have supported themselves by the cultivation of opium from poppy flowers, but with the increased control over the drug trade, most of the Hmong people are turning from the production of opium to the sale of their exquisite needlework in order to supplement their income.

Hmong women traditionally make clothing for their families from cotton or hemp and their clothing is richly decorated with magnificent embroidery and silver jewelry. Blue Hmong women wear beautiful pleated skirts with bands of red, blue and white intricately embroidered; their jackets are of black satin, with wide orange and yellow embroidered cuffs and lapels. White Hmong women wear black baggy trousers with a long wide blue cummerbund; their jackets are simple, with blue cuffs. Many of the men are skilled in blacksmithing and gunsmithing as well as producing musical instruments and other items made of wood, bamboo and rattan.

Each family in a Hmong tribe will wear the same pattern in their clothing, and the women spend a year making the intricate garments. The special family garments are worn on special occasions and we were able to spend some time watching a couple of women from one family making a jacket. The women were very skilled and were able to embroider the clothing very quickly! We walked around the large Hmong village housing 300 residents, and enjoyed some tasty roasted salted peanuts and stale homemade donut holes while enjoying visiting with the villagers. We even saw a concerted group effort being made by a husband, his four (yes, four!) wives and other members of his family, when they were chopping down part of a large tree. There were about five people sitting in the tree and about ten people on the ground pulling a rope connected to the tree, and when the tree fell, many cheers went up in the air!

After visiting the Hmongs, we had a very cheap lunch before moving an hour further north towards our final stop at a Palong tribe village. There are only a few Palong villages in Thailand, all of them located in the northern part of the Chiang Mai province along the border to Myanmar (Burma). At present, the population is about 60,000, and the majority of the people's main livelihood is the cultivation of tanatep, a large leaf used to wrap burmese cigars. The men and women of the tribe both decorate their teeth with gold, and the Palongs are easily recognised by the striking dress of their women. The women wear red sarong-like garments, covered by a blue jacket with a red collar and a broad silver waistband.

As there are few villages left in Thailand, the Palong village we explored caters to many tourists each day. This has therefore increased competition between tribal families, and each family was extremely pushy trying to sell us their handicrafts. When the Canadian with us said that she wanted to buy a wristband for a souvenir for her friend, several Palongs mobbed her trying to get her to buy from each of them. She ended up buying ten of them, but we escaped with the purchase of only one. American clothing retail stores should recruit Palongs to move their goods as they would be extremely successful with their pushy sales technique, and would fit right in with some stores (no names will be mentioned).

When we arrived back in Chiang Mai after a day's tour of the hilltribe villages, Hnum took us to the bus station so we could pick up our bus tickets to travel to the border town of Chiang Khong the next day. We had previously paid for the tickets at the bank near Spicythai, and it was just a matter of collecting the tickets at the window. There was a small shop in the bus station selling iced Milo drinks, and if you are ever in Southeast Asia, be sure to try one of these delicious chocolate drinks. Back at the hostel, we decided to have a low-key evening, so we went for our last Thai dinner at a nearby local restaurant. Unfortunately, the meal was not the best meal we have had in Thailand, but it was still tasty. We felt we were ready to leave Thailand and head to our next country in the morning, Laos.