The north of Thailand has several populations of ethnic minorities: The Hmong, Maos, Yaos, Karen, Long-Neck Karen and several others. These tribes live in their own communities and are slowly being absorbed into Thai culture and touristic service. One of the draws of going to northern Thailand, is to do multi-day treks into the mountainous jungle, to catch a glimpse of these tribes, many whom live their lives just as they had 100-200 years ago. This was certainly one of the reasons we chose to come to this area of Thailand. Read any guide book and you’ll hear stories of elephant rides across the infamous opium cultivation area of the Golden Triangle of Thailand, Laos and Burma by culturally sensitive trek operators giving you a glimpse of tribes rarely seen. And I’m sure there are those kinds of experiences still to be had if you look hard enough. Multi-day eco-treks most definitely take adventurous souls to less accessible spots, but for a large majority of the less-adventurous minded, a day trek is really nothing more then a mini-van tour to accessible national parks and a few village stops where tourism is really altering the tribal social fabric and not in a good way.
Unfortunately for us, we came to the region during New Years, which is when the trek companies all close for the holidays and all that’s available are the ‘mom and pops friendly’ day tours. We signed up with a ‘culturally sensitive’ trek operator, who (unbeknownst to us) gave us to a tour consolidator, who tacked us on to the most base of day-tour operators. The kind where you spend 10 hours driving in van packed with 14 people and a cumulative 2 hours outside of the van. In some of the villages we briefly passed through, I literally felt like a walking atm machine. The picture above was taken because the women badgered me into taking it in exchange for a dollar, admittedly I felt a good dose of liberal guilt. It was wonderful catching a glimpse of these tribes and with my camera in hand I had a few truly great interactions, but for the most part the effect our presence had on the tribes we visited, was enough to make my skin crawl.
My advice? It really pays to do your homework before you go, learn who the good operators are, ask people’s advice on online forums and stay away from day treks.
