Northern Thailand Hilltribe
Jul 12th, 2005 by Lillian
The Lahu tribe originated in the southwest of China and have migrated into Thailand from northern Burma. Most of the villages are close to the Burmese boarder, in Chiang Rai, near Fang and in Mae Hong Son province.
They have four tribes. The Lahu Black, Red, Yellow and She-leh.
Lahu is spoken by 580 000 people in China, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
The Lahu are initially quite shy and reserved but it doesn’t take long for them to laugh and enjoy your visit . Many villages are very very poor. Many have received help from aid agencies, missionaries and the Kings Royal Project. Initiatives such as crop production and marketing handicrafts have helped them as well. The Lahu were a hunting community until a lack of game and shortage of primary forest forced them into a more agricultural existence. They find change very difficult and to foreigner its often seems hard to understand their lack of initiative. Many have never been to school and are illiterate.
In Thailand, like many other hilltribes, the Lahu have no Thai citicenship. Some receive ID cards and are permitted to leave the province.
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Hi Lillian, although it was a few months ago that you posted the entry, I hope you’ll find this comment and hopefully reply. I’m interested in what your thoughts are on tourists visiting hilltribe villages in Northern Thailand. I recently moved from Sydney to live in Bangkok and was recently up in Chiang Mai for Yee Peng a couple of weeks ago and felt like too much of a newbie to have a proper opinion about whether this was encouraging the human zoo notion or not…as a local in the area, I’d love to hear your opinions on this.
Hope it’s warming up up North.
Kind regards,
Sarah (Bangkok)
Hi Sarah,
well, firstly I’m NOT a local. I’m very much a Farang. I’ve never been on a trek and so I can’t really judge how bad those trips are. We work with the Lahu people and do development projects in their villages, so the approch is totally diffrent. I just hope who ever organises those tours has the wisdom and courage to know when its time to stop going to a village. Ideally it should be a win- win situation. If the tourists give the villages a way of making money other than growing poppy flowers, why not?! I know this theme has been discussed endlessly. My lahu friends answer this question with ”it depends…”
Would be nice to hear from a Thai person what he or she thinks….