Gary in Thailand (and elsewhere)
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Blogging with the Karen
This post may take a little while to load. It's got a lot of pictures and some multimedia features I hope you'll like.
The regions around Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in the north of Thailand are famous for their "hill tribes", ethnic groups not directly related to the Thai who remained in their own communities in the highlands while the Thai developed the valleys and river plains. Up North, numerous tour guides lead "treks" to visit the villages of groups such as the Lisu, Akha, Karen, Meo, Lahu, Yao, and Lawa, each with distinct customs and traditional garb.
What a lot of folks don't realize (including, I've found, many Thais) is that hill tribe folks also live in the more southern parts of the country, particularly the spine of hills that runs down the long peninsula that connects Thailand to Malaysia and forms the border with Burma.
The southern hill tribes are almost entirely Karen (pronounced more like "currian" than "karen") and unlike the northern groups, they don't get many visitors. There's a few reasons for that. One is that, being a single ethnicity instead of a multitude, they're probably thought to be of less interest to tourists. Another is that tourism in the South tends to be focused on the beaches, a feature the northern regions lack. Another reason may be that the Karen communities lie on both sides of the border between Burma and Thailand, and the area is a little tense for tourists to be wandering around.
Luckily for me, I have my friends Atya and Wisut to lead me places that other tourists don't go. And so it was that one Saturday last month, I piled into a van with several other folks to go visit a couple of schools that Atya's department are developing in the hills above Hua Hin.
When we got there (somewhere above the famous waterfalls at Pala U), we were greeted by the blue-garbed students you see above. Do they wear these things every day? I kind of doubt it. I suspect that most of the time, the Karen in the area wear the same non-descript stuff the rural Thais wear, and you go right through their villages without suspecting a thing. But it looks darn nice, doesn't it?
(click on the picture above to download a file with audio)
After paying respects and settling in, the students gave us a show of traditional games, singing, and dancing. The first part was the one you see above, where couples dance between bamboo poles that are being rhythmically opened and closed by the other participants, the goal (obviously) being to look graceful without getting your feet caught.
(click for audio file)
After that, we were treated to a dance that mimes the actions of traditional Karen agriculture, including planting, reaping and so forth.
Continuing that theme, we then got a demonstration (live, not danced) of how the harvested grain is winnowed and ground into flour.
If you've checked out the audio files linked to the two pictures above, and you're really brave, you can click here, or here, to download full-motion video. The zipped files are 4 and 10 MB in size, so it may take a while.
These media files are still an experiment, so let me know if you have problems. You can send email by clicking here, or just send to garyshall@aol.com
After the demos, we got a warm goodbye, as you can see below. These are genuinely nice people.
I learned later that our visit was sort of a dress rehearsal for tour groups to come and visit, as a way to get needed revenue and raise awareness of the presence of these people in this part of the country. Apparently, just yesterday, the first group of tourists (a Thai group from Ranong) were brought to visit. I'm of mixed feelings about it. I hate to see yet another people's culture packaged and marketed, but these folks do need help and attention.
Hope you enjoy this post!
Monday, July 26, 2004
A Fresh Start
I'm trying out Blogspot's new front-end, with a view to relaunching my blog in a more multimedia format. Thanks to everyone who's kept checking even when I've been seriously off my blogging...
