Mae Hong Son to Mae Sariang, Thailand

Preface: Spent 2.5 hours typing this post only to have had the system log me out somewhere along that time frame and there wasn't a single word saved! After a night's sleep, let's try again. I'm typing this on Dec. 25 at 6:40 AM and am sick with a full on cold.

Our day starts at 9:00 AM and we head on down the road only about 15-20 minutes or so and we reach our first adventure of the day. We are going to take a long tail boat up the Pai River towards Burma to visit the Karan Long Neck Tribe. This was a great surprise for me as I didn't know this was included in this tour that I had switched to from my first choice months ago.

As Mae Hong Son started to grow and develop, the Karan Tribe people were moved out of Mae Hon Son by the Thai Gov't and they were relocated to this patch of land about 2 km from the Burmese border. They're refugees from Burma.

Sutthi and I get on a long tail boat, put on our life jackets and take a fast boat ride 15 minutes down the Pai River. Our boat is captained by a man in the rear commanding the motor. His son, who looks to be about age 12 or so is sitting up front. The motor of a long tail boat is about 20 feet long. It has a very tiny propeller. The river has some activity on it. We pass rice farmers carrying heavy bags of rice on their heads, loading it into their boats. Long Tail boats can take on a vast amount of weight and they don't show the slightest sign of capsizing. We can see how much the river rose during the rainy season by all the garbage that got caught up in the tree branches. It looks to be some 6-8 feet up in the branches. Our boat pulls up to the bank and the young boy jumps out first.

Long Tail boat on the Pai River (heading towards Burma).

The smell of smoke greets us on the banks of the Karan Village. Talk about culture shock! I have never ever in my life seen anything like this. The "road"/trail goes up the hill and bamboo houses are chock-a-block lined up side-by-side. By house, I imagine they're perhaps 240 square feet. Another reality check as to how "big" we do things in North America. I spot my first Karan woman with the brass rings on her neck and I am conscious of the fact that I shouldn't be gawking at her like she's in a zoo but it's hard not to stare. Most of the houses have a frontage area where the women are weaving scarves to sell to the tourists. No clue what the men do all day but many of the women are being productive.

Wearing brass rings is choice nowadays, or so Sutthi tells me. But there was a baby probably a year old with rings on her neck so how that is her choice I haven't quite figured that out yet. The woman who was holding her, if I presume that is her mother, wasn't wearing any rings on her neck.

The rings are changed 5 times throughout a lifetime. As the neck elongates, the rings are removed (can't imagine how they do that), and replaced with a long section of rings. Around age 45 the final set of rings is placed on the neck and these are the rings the lady will wear until the day she dies. At their heaviest, the rings can weigh 7 kg. I held a set of rings that weigh 3 kg and that was pretty darn heavy. Can't imagine wearing more than twice that weight.

Some women wear the big earrings that create the big hole in the earlobes. Some women choose to wear a golden colour on their faces. It looks like a stencil. One teenage girl had  gold-painted leaves on her cheeks. It was pretty.

Karan Long Neck Village

We walk up to the end of the road where the school is. Although it's a school day there is no school as there is no teacher. A common problem here as Sutthi tells me that teachers simply decide to not show up because they don't want to work so remotely. Karan kids are only educated to the 2nd or 3rd grade.

The bamboo houses are built close together. They look to be about 240 square feet in size, all built on stilts. Many women weave scarves in front of their house and hang them out to sell to tourists.

A beautifully designed home

The nice thing about touring with Sutthi is that he is able to communicate with these people. He chats up some guys standing around a fire stirring a huge vat of delicious smelling pork.  Karans are not Buddhists. They believe in the spirit world and are cooking the pork to take it up to the cemetery as an offering to their ancestors. Afterwards there will be a big celebration. Some young men are preparing floral wreaths for the celebration. The vat's "lid" is made from woven leaves. A woman pours beer over the leaves.

   

We chat up a woman sitting outside her home. She pulls out the contents of her tobacco bag: bitternut, leaves, and some dried herbs/leaves. Sutthi explains to me about the bitternut that they chew. It leaves their teeth stained brown, their lips stained red and it's addictive like tobacco. She offers me 1/2 of her bitternut.  “No thank you”, I tell her.

She offered to share her Bitternut with me.

We start heading towards our boat and Sutthi spots an elder and he gets so excited. He first met this lady 20 years ago and he was so happy to see that she was still alive. We find out that she is 90 years old now. She wears the brass rings on her neck, and on each of her calves too. She is chewing bitternut and is spitting it out not so lady-like. She wipes her mouth and the red stain looks like a lip liner gone astray. Sutthi gives her some money and it's obvious he has an affection for her.

Our last stop is to buy some BBQ'd bananas. Very tasty. 

The boat captain and his son are waiting at their boat to take us back up the river to civilization.  We take our places on the floor of the boat and head back up the river

We drive a few hours and stop for lunch. Today's lunch was a whole fish fried crispy with crispy garlic. We also had the ever present white rice, stir fried vegetables and a crispy fried bone-in pork. Delicious as I've come to expect with all Thai food.

Along our travels, if there's an interesting Temple, Sutti shows it to me.

Next stop is a Calacite crystal cave at Mae La Noi. We stop at the information centre where we hire a private taxi to take us to the cave. Sutthi and I hop in the back of a rickety old Toyota pickup truck. The driver guns it as best he can up the steep mountain road and I hold on for dear life. At the cave we hire a guide with a dim flashlight. We walk down into the belly of the cave some 120 meters. It has 5 chambers. It was only discovered 20 years ago and is estimated to be 435-500 million years old. No photography allowed and no bright lights as any light at all affects the calacite and turns it brown (hence the very dim flashlight). We climb back up the 144 steps and hop into the back of our taxi/truck which we share with an American from Washington, DC. He is on a 5-month cycling tour. He had finished 3 months in Cambodia and was now touring Thailand.

Our stop for the night is in the town of Mae Sariang. The streets are adorned with purple flags stuck into the ground every few feet. Sutthi says that means the Princess of Thailand is in the area. The day of the week you are born on has a colour associated with it. Purple is the Princess's colour, yellow is the king's colour. These flags are everywhere. There's a heavy police presence. Sutthi checks me into the Riverside Resort with an intention he will find a cheaper place to sleep but the hotel clerk tells him that he won't find anything for miles as the roads are closed off. Sutthi decides to stay at the Riverside Resort too. There's really nothing to do in this town. No night market. I went out for a walk but the streets were really quiet and dark. I found a 7-11. These stores are everywhere in Thailand. I bought some ointment for my sore throat, a kitkat bar, a lychee jello cup, and a big bottle of water. It came to less than $3.00 Cdn.

For a hotel set on a river bank, it was a noisy hotel. I put my earplugs in and head to bed. Never heard a thing all night.