Day 1 Reflection: Horses counting to ten

Day One, Chiang Mai. This morning, I awoke to the jarring sound of the morning call ringing next to my ear. And so the day started with us hustling to the bus to Chiang Rai. Our purpose? To visit the tourist spots there for interviews. As part of the tourism group, I have rather high hopes for the trip to be enjoyable and fun as we have the privilege to visit the tourists spots here in Thailand while doing our work!

Our first stop upon reaching was to the tribes people. Located within a minute’s walk within each other, five different tribes had built their villages next to each other for tourists to visit. Apparently, some smart guy 40 years ago thought that it would be a good idea to sit the leaders of the tribes to pitch them this business idea. I can just imagine the chieftains sitting in a panel- much like Shark Tank- listening to this nervous business man pitch his idea while a few of them sharpens their spears!

Jokes aside, this “tourist attraction” came together based on sustainable tourism by allowing the tribes people to retain their culture while earning money to survive near the city. There are three main source of income for the people:

1. Visitors would have to pay an entrance fee to enter the village
2. Tribespeople would retail certain goods to tourists to earn an income
3. Land near the villages are leased to farmers to farm crops

I thought it was a pretty innovative and great concept of a social enterprise. Or so I thought…

We entered the cluster of villages through the “Akha Village Gate”- a gate designed to keep out evil spirits by warning them that there are humans living within. Within minutes, we could see the village. At first sight, everything seemed normal, as I would expect of a rural village with beautiful rustic huts, sunlight filtering through the canopy and complete with squawking chickens. But upon a second look, something about the place seemed rather off to me. On the porch of various huts sat grimy plastic toys, modern looking clothes and a discarded plastic bottle or two lying around. It was almost as if the whole place had tried to modernise but fell somewhat short. As we progressed through the village, the only people we saw were middle aged to elderly women dressed in traditional robes paddling their handmade goods. There was no sign of children or men around. We ended up in a huge hut where the locals, the same women paddling goods, put up a performance for us.

We moved on to the second village which was not very much different from the first. There, we conducted an interview with an elderly women who had lived in the village for over ten years. It progressed rather normally until we asked her about the incident at the white temple where Chinese tourists had left the toilets unusable. Though it did not seem to trigger anything to the others, I was really shocked and yet sad that she had never heard of the white temple despite having stayed in Chiang Rai for such a long time.

We moved through the next village quickly and ended up in the Long Neck Village. This was the first place we actually saw families in the village though, personally, things did not get much better. We saw children who are barely old enough to go to school are forced to sell goods to support the families with rings weighing as much as 5kgs around their necks. At the side, I saw the men of the families sitting and watching while tourists took photos of their children and wives like they were tourist attractions.

All in all, the time in the village reminded me of what I read on Disneyfication – only from another angle. This is where many of these tribesmen get split from their people and culture to come to a foreign land only to be used as “attractions” to be gawked at. They “sell” themselves to retain the fascinating part of their culture so as to earn a living from tourists. It reminded me of the quote:

“A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.” – Samuel Johnson

This experience is completely different from when I had visited the tribes people at Taman Negara where we went to an actual tribe to learn about their culture and had blown dart pipes. There, it felt genuine as the tribe was just packing their huts to roam to another part of the jungle to stay.

All in all, this experience tells me that often times, there is more then meets the eye- even for social enterprises- and even great ideas might not mean great results. On a personal level, I will try to take more care when helping others to start or even when I try to start my own social initiative.