From Laos we headed to North Thailand for a week of motor biking. We flew into Chiang Mai and caught the "VIP Green Bus" for a comfy three hour night drive to Chiang Rai. We arrived to heavy rain and found a guesthouse / simple motel for $10/night. Soaked to the bone, we changed, found a yummy Chinese restaurant down the street and collapsed to sleep.
The next morning we bought a map and stored our bags at a local bookstore. We rented a scooter for $8/day and Lee took the wheel while Jazz held on behind. Our first stop was the White Temple, only to be described as nuts. It included "hellish" Buddhist renderings, a plaster statue of Alien, and a massive fresco of Neo from the Matrix, George W. Bush riding a space shuttle with Osama Bin Laden, random people having sex, the NYC Twin Towers imploding, Avatar characters, Kung-fu Panda, the International Space Station, cell phones, Converse shoes, and other crazy shit. All of which was being eaten by a orange demon with tentacles. Maybe there was something in our Chinese food the night before and we just imagined it all? Either way it was an interesting / psychedelic experience.
We made our way along the A1 Super Highway towards Mae Sai, stopping at a site where hill tribes demonstrated traditional ways of life. Created for tourists, we had mixed feelings, but later discussions with our Thai guide indicated the program supports traditional arts and self-sufficiency by providing annual wages paid by the King. Tribes receive a consistent income regardless of sales and therefore sales are not driven by profit, allowing tribes to continue traditional, labor intensive techniques. Tribes included the Akha, Yao, Palong and Karen (known world-wide as the brass neck ring women). Crafts were beautiful and everyone was friendly. A few silk scarves and blankets later our single backpack was stuffed full and we continued north.
We turned off the A1 onto the 1089 towards Mae Salong to travel the countryside. Rain, rice paddies, lush vegetation and big hills greeted us around every bend. When our little bike couldn't make it up the steep hill, Jazz jumped off (or was she pushed off?) and walked with the backpack while Lee zipped past. Towards evening a road-side cafe directed us to a guesthouse. We followed the proprietor and negotiated a room at the husband-wife run B&B. That evening we soaked in a nearby hot springs (layed out in a spiral pattern) under a blanket of stars. It was one of the more peaceful moments of our trip, and reminded us that the road less travelled often offers the best surprises. We rounded out the evening with a home cooked meal and cold beer. Not bad for an unplanned drive down a country road.
The next few days we drove north to Mae Salong through country roads and returned to Chiang Rai via the A1. We sputtered up to fantastic views on our little bike, visited tea plantations, browsed local markets and enjoyed amazingly fresh food (skipping the fried and live grasshoppers). We filled our motorbike with gas from coke bottles for $2 and were entertained by the Mae Fah Luang Thai Police (great place if you need WiFi, a printer or a quick 3-in-1 Super Coffee mix!). On the return trip we visited the Royal Villa and gardens (where our new Mae Fah Luang police buddies were at work) and explored Tham Phum tham Pla ("Fish Cave"), a Buddhist cave-turned-temple where the main attraction was crazy tourist-harassing monkeys. But these monkeys were merely a side-show to the beautiful caves where local monks placed Buddhist statues in the pitch dark amongst cold pools of water and melted candles. We explored the caves using our phone’s light, completely alone aside from these remarkable statues and the occasional flutter of bats, only turning back when going further into the pitch-black caves required scuba gear.
Our last day on the road and an hour away from Chiang Rai we collided with an overachieving pothole. This pothole would make Chicago streets proud! Our front wheel jack knifed and we skidded a good ten meters. Luckily we didn’t land on the muffler and no one was driving behind us. Lee ripped up his clothes and got some deep scrapes, while Jazz had a massive bruise on her thigh from being catapulted up and landing back on the seat's metal frame. A bus and two women in a car stopped to help, and after a short rest we drove back to the guesthouse with Lee barely able to shift and bleeding from his knee and hands. Fun stuff! That night Jazz played nurse, sterilizing scraps and picking out gravel with tweezers. Although a bit shaken up, we were lucky. If you’re on a motorbike in Asia, be smart and wear jeans, a helmet and good shoes. On the plus side, at least we got to use our first aid kit!
Our last day was spent with Jermsak, a local tour guide we found here. Mending our wounds, he drove us around and we had a great chance to ask questions about culture, etc. He even stuck a native plant to Lee’s wounds, which didn’t seem to help much but definitely looked fun! At the bottom of the blog post are a few insights we had from the people we met and the places we experienced.
The next two weeks we rested in Bangkok and returned to Hong Kong for a second round of this unique metropolis.
Below are a few observations based on personal experience and discussions with people, they are not based on research! Enjoy or skip at your leisure!
Thailand is the only SE Asian country that never got colonized, apparently due to their super smart and savvy monarchy. The Thai revere their current 84 year old king because he cared for the country, but they’re concerned about his only son’s lack of philanthropy and what his rule means for their future. Sadly, only one of the king’s four daughters has taken up the king’s projects to help the Thai people. And similar to the UK, the government is not associated with the monarchy.
On a lighter note, rice fields are planted in July and harvested in October. The rice needs a lot of work the first month and is left to grow for 3 months before harvesting. Unfortunately not enough young people return home to help with harvest, so there’s an expectation that family-operated fields will be sold to corporations and workers will be contracted.
Historically becoming a monk was well respected in Thailand, similar to Laos, and families wanted sons to be monks because it would provide the family a “short cut” to heaven as the parents would be “carried up on the monks shirt.” Wealthy families would send sons to monk “boot camp” (three months of being taught to be a better person and husband with a “certificate tattoo” at the end) since that was the best way to get their sons educated when schools were inadequate. This provided temples income, but meant poorer families were unable to send their sons. Since schools are now better, wealthy families prefer to send sons to school and gain religious favor by donating money to the temples. This means temples have direct income and can offer free education to sons of poorer families.
Girls are not seen as very valuable in Thai society (at least historically and in the rural areas) since they could not be monks, so they are often “sold” and sent to Bangkok to earn money for the family. Many end up as prostitutes or sold to wealthy widowers. If you’re interested in learning more about child prostitution in Thailand, we recommend checking out Somaly Mam Foundation and the Grey Man. Corruption is an issue and given our recent discussions with friends in Australia, the Thai police are not always on the right side of child prostitution.
School is free and mandatory for boys and girls from 1st to 6th grade. It used to cost money after 6th grade, and as a result girls were often not sent because families didn’t have the money nor found girls worth the expense since they would ultimately marry and leave. However, the recent government made 7th to 12th grade free and mandatory, so education levels are rising. College still costs money but Jermsack thought it may be made free in the future as the government could use it as a political platform for winning future elections. Interestingly, the education system is paid for by lottery ticket taxes.
Families typically have two to four kids, but there have been programs to educate folks about having fewer kids in order to increase living standards. Girls used to marry between 13 to 16 years old, since they worked in rice fields and apparently would “look old by 20.” Boys would marry between 16 to 18 years old. Marriage ages have been increasing though, with 20-25 and 24-28 typical for women and men, respectively.
Akha, one of the poorest hill tribes, has some interesting spiritual beliefs. These require animal sacrifices and can make it hard to live. Apparently a few have been converting to Christianity to make life easier; however, ironically this makes it more difficult to maintain their custom of having multiple wives and quick marriages / divorces. They also they have a belief that twins or multiple child births are “bad luck” for the family and village. This means that the children would either be killed or the family exiled. Today, when faced with this option, the family sometimes converts to Christianity rather than be exiled. Jermsack thought the belief probably stemmed from the difficulty of raising multiple babies at once in very poor, rural communities and the impact on the community.
Opium used to be grown by the Akha, and as many as 60% of the older generation were addicted (note that the hill tribes constitute the majority of native population in the Golden Triangle, the historic centre of opium production in South East Asia). Recently, many have beating their addiction and only about 20% of elderly still smoke. The bad news though, is that the newer generation prefers meth and ecstasy as their drugs. Apparently it gives them energy and doesn’t make them lethargic like opium…
The Karen have three legends that explain the purpose of their neck ring: 1) protecting women from tiger bites, 2) the Karen queen put plants around her neck when the Karen didn’t win independence in their war against Burma’s people, so the people followed with brass rings and 3) Karen are decedents of swans and must prepare their necks to show that decent. Of course these are silly stories and really the rings are about showing wealth and beauty (historically they were gold rings) and to achieve a separate identity from other hill tribes. Interestingly, girls these days are beginning to ask to not have rings since they are integrated into schools with non-Karen children. Where their rings used to be signs of cultural identity and beauty, they now make them feel different than their classmates and are not generally seen as pretty.
We saw a lot more cars in Thailand than in Laos or Cambodia. Many are trucks including a fair number of Toyota Hilux trucks. These are mostly silver and metallic beige “gold” cars since apparently Thai people are superstitious and believe that these colors are an indication of good luck and prosperity.
The average monthly pay is 6,000 to 10,000 baht ($190 to $320 USD, so yearly salary is around $4,200) and a small rental room/apartment is 1,500 baht, leaving only a little to live from. Many people send 1,000 baht back to their home families (hill tribes) to support them since they are no longer in the village to help. Retirement and pensions for police are 15,000 baht a month, which is not much either but at least will give them a decent living where they can afford medical care.
Drug trafficking goes on a lot and police checkpoints turn up drugs often (meth and ecstasy, also opium and cocaine). If the local police are corrupt they may take bribes from the drivers. Most traffickers/mules are sent to jail, while the big “higher up” guys who are corrupt in the villages remain free.
Tourism is 60-70% of government income, with rice and rubber as the main exports (more rice than rubber, sort of like Laos). Rubber does not create much stress environmentally since it is exported to China in its raw form mostly (as sap, mixed with some chemicals). So it is relatively eco-friendly, although rubber plantations have replaced a lot of native forests.
Historically around the Vietnam War the KMT from China had streamed into northern Thailand and were convincing commoners and hill tribes about the wonders of Communism. The king was able to refute these promises by showing folks how to be self-sufficient and improve their economic situation through hard work. He and the queen mother set up programs for the hill tribes to contribute their weaving and other handicrafts and help in re-forestation for a wage (rather than just direct profits from handicraft sales). This has provided them a consistent annual income that is not dependent on making a sale.
Betting is something Thai people do a lot. Technically it is illegal except for the government’s lottery and event-betting a few days a month (you’ll see people walking around with official ledgers). But apparently a lot of betting happens “under the table.”
We visited an elephant camp that had about 15 elephants. Compared to India they were well taken care of. These animals get to be 60 years old in general, and are usually trained to carry people and wood out of the forest by age 6. At first we weren’t going to get a ride but then we had time and decided to experience the countryside from the top of a HUNGRY elephant - no bamboo plants were safe! It was peaceful and cool to see the fields from the higher vantage point. Their hair is quite bristly and hard to the touch, which Lee found amusing. From there we saw two Akha villages, with their houses built up on stilts. This keeps the air in the house clean and allows for easy animal husbandry below the home. Interestingly we saw a lot of random trash lying around the villages and Jermsack explained that villagers are not generally educated in keeping things clean, etc. so that much of it washed in to the river and is carried downstream affecting many other peoples. Sorta typical for a lot of developing countries. Finally we walked to a smaller waterfall and saw a horned beetle (which apparently are used to bet and fight, as well as chickens, water buffalo - but not dogs! since it’s considered too cruel – nice to hear).
