Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides)

by James O'Reilly

  “In the winter,” Boy sighed, “it looks like a Japanese painting.” I nodded wistfully, counting the spots on the setting sun.

  Mae Hong Son has long been considered the Thai version of the Middle of Nowhere: a remote and relaxed hill town that in winter provides a welcome escape from Bangkok’s unrelenting heat. It still recalls, for some travelers, the Wild West; the town remains a way station for traders from Burma and a relay point for opium being smuggled out of the Golden Triangle.

  After returning to the temple I wandered down the main street, throat parched, stopping every few yards to gulp down a soft drink. Boy and Duang, meanwhile, downed bottle after bottle of Lipo-Vitan, a tonic that I imagined to be the Thai equivalent of “smart drugs.” When I asked where the drink’s enhancement qualities worked, they laughed uproariously and pointed, but not at their heads.

  After walking a few blocks I found an amazing junk and antique store, crammed floor to ceiling with a bizarre inventory: used motors, opium weights, saddles, temple bells, grandfather clocks, samurai swords, Buddhist begging bowls, beautiful Burmese prayer books, and exquisite wooden Buddhas.

  “Where did these come from?” I turned one of the gilt figures in my hand. There were dozens of them, all different.

  The owner tore his eyes away from a television show just long enough to regard me with annoyance, and shrugged his shoulders. Boy led me aside. “From Burma,” he whispered. “Thieves loot the temples and bring the things here to sell. Not so good, I think.”

  By the time we left the shop it was quite dark. We backtracked a block to the all-night market where quick, simple Thai dishes were being concocted at lightning speed beneath fluorescent tubes.

  We had a fast, delicious meal. The total bill was roughly $2.40. After dessert of fresh fruit salad, Boy handed me a typed itinerary that detailed our plans for the next day. These would include “a ride along the Pai River, an hour drive along a bumpy and dusty trail through the jungle, continued on another hour by Jumbo (without jet) to the frontier village of amazing Pa Dawng (long necks).”

  I didn’t even try to make sense of all this, but returned to my air-conditioned room at the Tara Hotel, where I spent half the night trying to figure out how they’d folded the cloth napkins next to my complimentary fruit platter into miniature pagodas.

  The next day dawned deliciously cool, with welcome rain clouds in the sky. “They’re not rain clouds,” Boy laughed. “Just smoke from early fires. You wait and see.”

  We began our day by driving to nearby Pai River and boarding a longtail boat. It was a lovely morning. Families scrubbed their clothes on the riverside, and men set up fishing traps suspended from poles bridging the current. Work teams dredged the shallows with pails, gathering sand and stones for construction projects. We passed through rapids, driving upstream into white water. After a half-hour or so, it occurred to me to ask Boy where we were going.

  “Nowhere,” he responded frankly. “All tourists in Mae Hong Son must do this. Duang will meet us at the end.”

  “And then?”

  “The Pa Dawng village.”

  The Pa Dawng, known in the vernacular as “long-necks,” are a tribal group of ethnic Burmese who have fled over the border to escape oppression at the hands of Burma’s ruling junta. Visiting such hill tribes, I gathered, is the big attraction in northern Thailand. All along the streets of central Mae Hong Son, travel agencies display brightly painted signs advertising one-, three-, even fourteen-day treks into the hills, with overnight visits to Shan, Lisu, Karen, Lahu, and Pa Dawng settlements. The Pa Dawng, with their unusual custom of elongating women’s necks with stacks of heavy brass rings, are the most exotic—and photogenic—of these tribes.

  About an hour’s drive out of Mae Hong Son we arrived at Naisoi, a Shan village. It was clean and simple, with elegant homes perched above the ground on poles. Each house had woven cane walls and an elaborate gate entering into a front yard.

  Naisoi was a quiet, easy place—much as I’d first imagined Mae Hong Son would be. Butterflies flitted between fragrant shrubs, and a narrow river gurgled beneath a wooden bridge. Outside the local wat, three children ran among the trees, playing with strange noise-makers: long sticks with buzzers on the end.

  As I approached, I realized that the “buzzers” were actually live cicadas. The ends of the sticks were coated with a sweet, sticky substance that attracted the bugs. At first I thought the children caught the cicadas for fun, for the loud buzzing sound they make. But they quickly removed the insects into plastic bags and ran off to catch some more. Boy later informed me that they’d be fried up as snacks.

  In a local restaurant, I scrutinized my lunch as Boy spoke with some Thai soldiers. Finally, he called me over.

  “We won’t be able to spend the night in the Pa Dawng village,” he explained. “There’s trouble on the Burmese border, less than two kilometers away. Tonight there may even be an invasion; the Burmese army might come after the long-necks.”

  “It’s funny,” he reflected. “There’s no fighting at all in the wet season. In the winter, everybody drops everything they’re doing to grow opium poppies. Then in the dry season, they fight. It’s like a game.”

  From Naisoi, all roads lead to the Pa Dawng village—or so say the local signs, emblazoned with bizarre caricatures of giraffe-necked humans. I was quizzical, then, when Duang pulled over and Boy signaled me to get out of the Rover.

  “What’s this, Boy?”

  “We must ride an elephant.”

  Boy and I walked to a clearing, where a man crouched disconsolately next to a wrinkled old pachyderm. After some minor acrobatics we were safely seated in the rickety howdah, and we set off along a dirt track leading through the jungle. At first I thought we were going directly to the long-necks village; but Boy informed me that the elephant ride was merely another scenic diversion, part of the usual tourist itinerary. My well-meaning hosts were clearly eager for me to partake of every nuance of the Mae Hong Son experience.

  This one, unfortunately, sort of backfired.

  The elephant was lazy, and the day was hot. Every third step, “Jumbo” veered hugely into the woods, oblivious to his driver’s hoarse commands. Each time he did so, Boy and I were thrust into the limbs of nearby trees, encounters which left us scratched and covered with red stinging ants.

  Ultimately the beast simply stopped, lifted his proud trunk high, and showered us liberally with dust. This said, he stood his ground. Whether goaded, coaxed, or even stuck with a bamboo plank, the elephant would not move. The driver finally dismounted, attached a hook to the elephant’s ear and led him down the trail like a petting zoo pony. Large was my relief when, after an abrupt shortcut, we came upon the Land Rover and the implacable figure of Duang smoking a cigarette beside it. Duang winked slyly as he held open the door of the car. His lack of English was more than compensated by his mastery of the droll regard. I climbed in and we set off bouncing along rough dirt roads and sloshing messily through rivers. The ancient Rover bucked like a mule.

  “Duang,” I said, “this car… it’s old…not so sturdy…many noise…”

  It is a popular belief of the Thai in general, that apart from human beings, certain ani- mals such as elephants, horses and ponies, buffaloes, oxen and cows, and certain inanimate things such as carts, rice, and what-not have in them each a khwan too. For the welfare of any animal or thing mentioned and also for the welfare of its owner, a certain rite is performed on special occasions. Such a rite we call in Thai tham khwan. Literally it means “the making of khwan.” The khwan of a human being also has its ritual tham khwan, which is a sort of confirmation sacrament.

  —Phya Anuman Rajadhon, Some Traditions of the Thai

  “Numbah One!” Duang hollered, thrusting a gnarled thumb, pointed skyward, in my face. “Body no good. Nevah break down.” He slapped the dashboard—what was left of it—as if to console the vehicle. A bolt flew out from somewhere, striking me painfully on the knee.

  Boy and I were gr
eeted at the entrance to the Pa Dawng village by Silver, a beautiful and sophisticated Shan Burmese woman in her late forties. She collected my entrance fee—about $12, which ostensibly goes to the Burmese resistance—and led us into the settlement. I counted about twenty thatched huts with shaded wooden porches and woven cane walls perched on the dusty hillside.

  We wandered up the hill toward the huts. The long-neck women sat on their porches, weaving, working, or nursing babies. Their rings appeared at once beautiful and oppressive, a decorative burden that seemed out of place in the late 20th century.

  The Pa Dawng village has long been a huge attraction, and many of the young girls have pictures of themselves—clipped from glossy travel magazines—plastered on their walls. At one hut, a woman named Mu Pong was manufacturing the traditional rings; they are actually spirals of brass, like polished car suspension springs. Boy tried to lift one with his foot, and howled at the weight. A good coil runs some ten pounds, and the women wear them on their legs and arms as well.

  Farther on we were introduced to another Mu Pong, who holds the village record for neck rings: 24.

  “What does this mean?” I inquired of Silver. “Is she the wealthiest woman in the village. Is she the headman’s wife?”

  “No.” Silver shrugged. “She was born with a long neck to begin with.”

  A girl’s first rings, explained Silver, are put on at the age of five and increased in number until the girl reaches her early twenties. Rather than elongate the neck, they actually push the collarbone down. As a result, the neck muscles grow quite weak; if the rings have to be removed for medical reasons, the neck must be supported by a brace.

  “You know,” I suggested to Silver, “the village could charge twice as much money if the men wore neck rings, too.”

  “No, no, impossible!” she cried. “Only the dragon has a long neck.” In Pa Dawng mythology, she explained, the women symbolize dragons—and the men are wind. What’s more, I was told, only girls born on a Wednesday during a full moon can wear rings.This was hard to believe as every single woman in the village seemed to be adorned.

  Our most memorable visit was to the home of Ma Nang, who brought out a crude, four-string guitar she had carved herself. Ma Nang sang us a haunting love ballad in her strange, stretched voice, and treated me to a beautiful smile. I tipped the musician twenty baht, which she folded into the hollow beneath her neck rings.

  Boy and I were denied permission to stay overnight, in spite of my earnest pleas. “It’s too uncertain,” Silver apologized. “The fighting is too close by. Every evening we have to pack our things and be ready to leave in an instant.”

  Our brief visit to the Pa Dawng village left me with mixed feelings. Some, chafing at the admission fee, have called the place a “human zoo”; but I had enjoyed meeting these unique people. The women were very happy to show off their long necks, and I was very happy to see them. What bothered me most was the fact that, since the rings go on at the age of five, the girls never had a choice about it. Then again, I wasn’t consulted about my own circumcision, either. For the Pa Dawng villagers, at least, the neck rings provide a living—and these are trying times for ethnic Burmese.

  Shortly before sunset, we took our reluctant leave, stopping to have a cup of tea with Silver. Through her window I watched the women bathing in the village stream, using fistfuls of grass and cold water to polish their burdensome jewelry to a high golden luster.

  We began our final day in northern Thailand with a visit to Wat Chongkham, an elegant temple located in the center of Mae Hong Son itself. After paying my respects to the resident Buddha, I entered an adjoining museum, where a series of wooden statues graphically illustrated the inevitable pitfalls of human existence. A hand-lettered sign drove home the point:The Circle On Life

  With the old people, illness

  people, after than, get dide,

  so what going on.

  I contemplated this in silence as we boarded the Rover and began what would be a six-hour drive to Chiang Mai, where a night flight would return me to Bangkok. Though it was still morning, the air was devilishly hot; the air vent felt like a blow dryer.

  Along the highway we overtook huge lumber trucks loaded with felled trees. Burma’s beautiful teak forests, I was told, are being sold off, at bargain-basement rates, to Thai industries. Sometimes the profits from these teak sales help arm Burma’s military dictatorship; sometimes the Karen rebels themselves benefit from the trade. The teak is milled in Thailand, and the finished products are sold worldwide.

  Yet even as we passed these trucks, half a dozen army tanks—amazingly fleet for their size—rumbled down the road in the opposite direction. I noted a conflict of interests here. The Thai government is taking obvious pains to keep the border war from spilling over into its territory; but it doesn’t forbid opportunity, while it lasts, of striking a bargain on rare hardwood.

  Continuing toward Chiang Mai, we stopped at the Fish Cave, a famous local shrine. A short walk through a lovely green park brought me to a little grotto, sheltering a golden statue of a saint. Below the grotto was a deep natural pool, filled with beautiful iridescent carp. They hung in the clear water like apparitions, and I found it easy to believe they were sacred. But why were they all clustered right here, in one spot?

  The reason became obvious as a troupe of Thai tourists came marching up. After reciting brief prayers they began to hurl offerings into the water: giant prawns, whole cabbages, and dozens of hardboiled eggs, dumped from huge plastic bags. The fish, sacred though they might be, were not above an old-fashioned feeding frenzy.

  Our final stop was at Tham Lod, a celebrated cave some forty miles northeast of Mae Hong Son. Fork-tailed swifts flew from the gaping entrance as we approached, accompanied by a lamp-bearing guide. Our tour of the cathedral-like interior consisted of appropriate activities, such as stumbling about in the darkness and bumping into stalagmites and stalactites.

  Tham Lod is enormous, at least a third of a mile long, with a river coursing through its length. By the time we approached the exit I was genuinely impressed by how eerie and otherworldly the place was. Beams of smoky light filtered in through the huge maw, illuminating the dark water. It looked exactly like a scene from Journey to the Center of the Earth.

  By the time we emerged it was late afternoon. Smoke from the day’s fires had spread like a dome across the sky, magnifying the spring heat. I would have gladly spent the rest of the day back in the cool silence of the cave or the breezy interior of the wat.

  As we made our way back to the car I spotted an austere dormitory on a nearby hillside. It was a monks’ retreat. Just a few yards away, I realized, devout Buddhists were sitting in isolated cells, deep in meditation. It seemed like the right idea: find a shady little place that the heat could not reach, settle down and cultivate an inner clarity that no amount of slash-and-burn agriculture could obscure. Someday, perhaps, I’d find myself in one of those little cells; meanwhile, there was the Land Rover waiting.

  Hours later, as we crested a range of hills, I pensively puffed on a Burmese cigar that I’d bought at the market in Mae Hong Son. I wouldn’t know a good cigar from a flying saucer, but after three puffs I was ready to be rid of this one. But what to do? The Rover had no ashtray.

  “Throw it out the window,” Boy advised.

  Out the window? A lit cigar? No, no, I couldn’t. But after one glance to the side, I did so without hesitation. The woods, you see, were already on fire, and smoke was billowing into the air. I fixed a bandanna over my face and found my notebook.

  “If you’re planning a visit to northern Thailand in the early spring,” I wrote, “don’t. Visit in the rainy season when fantastic clouds sail over the hilltops and waterfalls cascade in thunderous sheets of water. Visit in December, when the air is crisp and opium poppies wink seductively among the trees. But do not visit in mid-March or April, when fires bloom on every hillside, and the sky is the color of onion soup.”

  We hurtled on through th
e miasma, arriving at sunset in the nuclear winter of Chiang Mai.

  A Pa Dawng Postscript

  After I wrote about visiting the Pa Dawng, a number of people—including some close friends—took me to task. “Whether you intend to or not,” they said, “you’re helping to perpetuate an exploitive practice.”

  My friends’ arguments, at first purely emotional, were given credibility by a GlobalQuest Feature Service story by Jane Ellen Stevens. In her story, Stevens raised three specific points:• The Pa Dawng are Burmese refugees who, because of Thailand’s unwillingness to help them, are not eligible for assistance from the United Nations. Several years ago Thai entrepreneurs, seeking to exploit the plight of the Pa Dawng, offered them the opportunity to earn tourist dollars by donning neck-rings—a once-traditional practice they had abandoned years ago.

  • Tourists who visit the Pa Dawng settlements near Mae Hong Son are being misled by local guides—and by the Pa Dawng women themselves. Pa Dawng women have not been wearing the neck rings since the age of five; some put their rings back on just three or four years ago.