Chiang Rai, Thailand

On the morning of June 1st we took a 4 hour bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai, also in the north of Thailand. Half way through the bus ride we made a stop at a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms.

For those of you who followed my Europe blog (summer of 2009), you may remember the bright pink ridiculous pants I bought with Mikaela in Zurich. What made them ridiculous was that the crotch went almost down to my knees. Anyway I finally figured out the purpose of those ridiculous pants! And I purchased a new pair here in Thailand to serve this new found purpose. They are perfect for putting on top of shorts when you are entering a temple! Kate, Sydne and I all purchased matching ones, as seen in the photo above.

The main sight in Chiang Rai was the visit to see traditional hill tribe people. We drove up to the tribal reserve, where we had the opportunity to see a few different tribes including the Akha and the Karen.

The tribal people were displaying and selling their traditional hand crafts, and the Akha tribe even did a performance for us:

The most interesting of the tribes were the Karen: better known as the long-neck peoples. This tribe is known for the brass coils worn around their neck. The story behind the neck coils is that many hundreds of years ago, the women would stay in the tribal area while the men went hunting. One day a tiger came into the tribe and killed a number of the women. Since tigers attack people by biting into the neck, the tribe began protecting their women’s necks with these brass coils to prevent another tiger attack.

Now the brass coils are put onto every woman in the tribe, starting when the girls are between 4 and 7 years old, and are only ever taken off during childbirth, severe sickness, and when replacing the coils (when they need to be made longer as you age).

What I found very interesting is that the brass neckpiece is not actually a number of rings placed one on top of the other, as I had originally thought. It’s actually one long coil that is wrapped around and around the neck. On the older women, with the longest necks, the brass coil can reach a weight of 4.5 kg.

The woman in the photo below was actually featured in National Geographic:

Below is a diagram of the effects of the weight of the brass coils on the neck and spine, and another diagram of the coils being put on:

It was such an interesting afternoon!!