Talk about a moveable feast! We were stuck behind traffic in the old town of Phuket this time and the 'sidecar' of the motorcycle in front of us was loaded with all the bits and pieces this couple needed to set up their food stall at the local Night Market: boxes full of fresh groceries, stacks of plastic stools, fold-up tables, and coolers ('eskies' to the Aussie readers; 'cooler bins' to the Kiwis; but what does everyone call them everywhere else?) full of the tasty food they'd probably been preparing all day to sell that night. They weren't really that much of a traffic hazard. This is just an excuse for me to write about these wonderful Thai people who work so hard to make a decent living sell delicious fresh food each night. Thailand's markets and their tasty eats are one of our favorite things about travelling in this country. Now, isn't food itself motivation enough to travel? I think that deserves a blog of its own.
Our first night in Chiang Mai we thought we’d hit the Night Market then grab some dinner from the local vendors who have stalls in the markets in the surrounding streets. While the Night Markets get a bit samey after a while, all pedaling the same cheap t-shirts, fake DVDs and Thai handicrafts, the wonderful thing about the food stalls in Thai markets is that there are always a couple of stands with something interesting that you won’t find in other parts of the country. One of the first things we noticed as we started our Night Market window-shopping, however, was a sign: ‘Burger King now at Night Market’. And then we noticed another. And another. The illuminated street signs for Burger King were everywhere. Could there be anything more depressing? Maybe those travelers suffering from Bangkok Belly might disagree, but we didn’t come to Chiang Mai to eat at Burger King. The same way that we didn’t come to Thailand to sip Guinness at Mary O’Shea’s. Why do some travelers feel that they can’t visit another country without the ‘comforts of home’? Would you rather refuel at Burger King or buy a tasty Thai snack from this woman?
I love this spray-painted bus with its lurid colors. We're parked behind it in the belly of a car ferry on our way from Koh Samui to Phuket, a day's drive made longer by rain. As we sit in our little hire car waiting for the ferry to dock, extended Thai families start piling into their Hilux's, young guys start revving their motorbikes, and I study the map, figuring out the route we need to follow, the directions we need to take. We watch a couple of young backpackers struggling with their hefty loads, searching for a route between the vehicles to their bus at the front of the boat. They give up and retreat back upstairs, and on their way past they look at us in our car and smile. A tad envious I detect. Well, what a way to be travelling in the rain, poor things. It's moments like these that I'm glad that travel writing is our job, that we can afford to hire a car to travel through these countries, and that it doesn't really matter if it rains - we're not here to lie on a beach, this is work, after all. I wonder if anyone has written about Thailand's zany painted buses and trucks. What is it that makes them so amusingly attractive to my foreigner's eyes? Certainly their exoticism. Their kitsch appeal. But would I notice them in Australia? No, I'd probably think the paint job hideous. In Dubai, the Pakistani and Afghani guys also paint their trucks in vivid colours and hang kooky accessories to their rear vision mirrors. I've heard that in Pakistan there is a festival of painted trucks, the Painted Truck Caravan from Karachi to Kabul. I wonder if travellers actually plan a trip to Pakistan around the event. Could painted trucks inspire travel?
This family driving along a highway in the south of Thailand was one of the more troublesome of the traffic hazards that we confronted. While Dad was obviously driving at a responsible speed, it was the other vehicles on the road that concerned us. We've driven all over the world and we've come to the conclusion that the Thai drivers are quite possibly the worst. They're not the most aggressive nor fastest by any means (the Middle East wins those prizes), however, they must be the most oblivious. What is it about travelling that compels us to contemplate driving skills, habits and etiquette in a depth that we might not at 'home'? Is it that because we're always moving we more acutely notice the mechanisms of movement and the means of getting around, because quite simply, that's what we're doing, just travelling around. And what else are we to do during all those hours on the road staring out windows?
As we drive around Thailand we're struck by the number of traffic hazards we confront on the roads every minute of every day. They range from the downright scary to the surprisingly cute. But no matter how horrified we are when we suddenly come face to face with a herd of animals sauntering across the highway (ox in this case), or as we overtake a motorcycle carrying a family of six (a tiny child precariously perched up front, another small kid on behind soundly sleeping as he somehow clings on to his older sibling, the parents in between), we never seem to get as mad as we might at 'home', where road rage prevails. It's something about the exoticism of the hazards that amuses us more than alarms us. Our willingness to be surprised. Our openness to the unusual. But it's also because we're in a far more tolerant mood when we're travelling than we are on our tedious daily commutes to work where tempers can so easily flare. (Especially, for us, in the gridlock that is Dubai.) Don't you think? My husband, who is the driver in our partnership (I navigate) will probably disagree. But there have been so many traffic hazards to entertain us on the roads in Thailand that I thought I'd start this series.
What is it about cute smiling kids in traditional costumes in foreign countries that we find so disarmingly charming? Flick through the back pages of a travel magazine to the ads for tours to South America and Thailand hill tribe treks and there'll be a couple of rosy-cheeked little kids in colourful clothes leading some llamas or sitting on the steps of a church smiling sweetly. In this case the children in my picture are posing at a lookout in front of vistas of the Golden Triangle, the point where Laos, Myanamar (Burma) and Thailand meet. We would never use a guide if travelling for pleasure but when we're working and reviewing a resort we try to get a taste of the activities available to guests to best assess the experience on offer. At the Four Seasons Tented Camp at the Golden Triangle, there's a range of activities, from mahout training and elephant treks to excursions to the Opium museum, Burma, and the Golden Triangle. The latter involves a ride on a longtail boat to the very centre of the meeting of the waters of the Mekong and one of its tributaries so you can see the three countries around you, rides on a songthaew (the open-air truck typically used as a taxi in Thailand) and tuk-tuk (a motorised Thai rickshaw), a stroll around a market to see the squirming creatures and crunchy insects that are the local delicacies, a visit to a temple to learn how to make a wish and be blessed by a monk, and this trip to the lookout. While we came to the conclusion that the excursion was a wonderful compact introduction to Thailand for first-timers to the country, we were uncomfortable (once again! - see the previous post by my partner Terry) with the song and dance show. Okay, so the kids didn't dance. But they did sing, they recited something to the effect of "You can take our picture for 20 baht" in half a dozen languages, they posed in front of the Golden Triangle, their hands first in the traditional Thai wai gesture and then fingers formed in rabbit ears, and they smiled very sweetly. (We noted, however, that their most sincere and spontaneous smiles came at the end when we handed over the money.) This form of staged tourism is cheesy and awkward at the best of times - don't you think? - but it's quietly discomforting when it involves little kids who should be in school. While we adored our eager young guide, we were embarrassed and uncomfortable with being placed in a position where we felt required to take photos of the children, yet we didn't not want to take the snaps and insult both our guide and the kids. So we took our pics - Terry using the opportunity to get some insightful close-ups of the children, me politely following our guide's suggestions - and we very generously tipped the kids. We told ourselves the money was paying for their education and putting food on their family's table but still we felt our uneasy. If there's one thing that I don't find cool about travel, it's tourism. And the more staged it is - it doesn't matter how cute the kids are - the more it makes me want to stay at home.
By visiting the ‘longnecks’, the displaced Burmese women who wear brass coils around their elongated necks, are we perpetuating a method of lifelong discomfort (at the least) for these women that’s the equivalent of the lotus shoes that kept Chinese women’s bound feet tiny and ‘feminine’ (albeit deformed)? Or are we supporting a displaced tribe that relies on the income generated by tourists to survive? While the Lonely Planet Thailand guide we perused in a hotel gave the visit a positive spin, Rough Guide took the opposite tack. Given that Lara and I spend our lives telling people where to go (so to speak!), we decided we’d better visit to form our own opinions...
The signs proclaiming "longneck this way" as we approached the co-operative tribal village on the outskirts of Chiang Rai reinforced my already apprehensive outlook. Surely people visiting the women could at least learn the name of the tribe, the Padaung, a sub-group of the Karen tribe, and those putting up the signs would have enough respect to do the same. To me it was very much “roll up, roll up, see the mustachioed woman!” It placed the women at the ‘freak show’ end of the range of touristic experiences.
The entry fee was steep for Thailand and we wondered how much money the ‘longnecks’ were getting out of this. A disinterested little Thai girl served as our guide, taking us first to meet a beautiful old woman from the Akha tribe. She wasn’t a ‘longneck’, but was the kind of grandma whose face lights up when she smiles, revealing a life well lead and an old age well earned. I took her portrait and hoped that it captured in ones and zeros some of the spirit she possessed. Next, we were led to a simple building where a group of tribespeople played traditional music. While the elaborate headdresses were in place, enthusiasm was conspicuously absent. Some t-shirt-clad members of the troupe clearly wanted to be anywhere else but standing in front of a couple of travellers looking for a ‘cultural experience’. The embarrassment of the situation was evident on both sides. Before the song had finished several had their headdresses off and were wandering away.
After passing the obligatory stands of handicrafts our guide happily pronounced ‘longneck!’ with a flourish. As soon as I saw the intriguing face of the first Padaung woman sitting on the verandah of her wooden hut weaving textiles on a primitive loom, I knew I couldn’t shoot any photos to sell (I left the task of shooting pics for this blog to Lara who chatted to the woman about weaving). I’d seen this very woman on countless postcards and her image had been exploited enough. From a purely aesthetic point of view, she was photogenic, but I felt no compulsion to photograph her. I like to shoot portraits when I feel that someone has an interesting face and sense a confidence in themselves and who they are that can shine through in a photo. Here I felt that I'd just be shooting her for her physical oddity rather than her beauty of spirit, which, I must say, she certainly possessed. We asked her about her weaving and moved on. We met a couple of other ‘longnecks’, both of whom I'd also seen on postcards, but while several tourists snapped away, I just wanted to leave. On the way back to the car we crossed paths with two cute ‘longneck’ children with a couple of rings around their necks. I thought of what lay in store for them in the future – drinking through a straw, working a loom, and being happy-snapped by gawking tourists as they live their life in what is essentially a cruel neck brace.
I often make jokes about my professional digital SLR camera being the ‘soul stealer’, as it’s so big, especially with a flash attached, that it makes people apprehensive when I shoot their portrait. And in some customs the creation of an image or likeness of a person is seen as stealing their soul. I always ask before shooting a portrait, but with the ‘longnecks’ the price of admission gives you carte blanche to snap away. To me, there’s never been a more soul-stealing experience than this. Every snapshot someone takes of the Padaung women is directly contributing to the creation of another generation of young women who have to uphold this tradition. There’s no doubt about it. The complexities of cultural identity aside, the commodification and marketing of the experience is just as abhorrent as the practice itself. Many other cruel decorative practices, such as the Chinese lotus shoes, have been phased out. So should this. The fact that another generation of women will suffer the same indignity aided by my financial contribution makes me uncomfortable. Do you think you’d feel the same way?
