Thailand Tour Day 4

We left Chaing Rai and headed for Ban Lorcha - a hillside village community. It is a tourist based community developed to promote a sustainable lifestyle for the villagers.

Two seperate tribes were relocated here and live in nearby communities, although not integrated. Their costumes were quite different and their languages also - they are so different that the two villages are unable to communicate verbally with each other.

The people in the villages tended to be either very young or very old. We suspected that despite the governments hope to sustain village life, the youth and middle aged people still left the village to find work in the cities.

As you can see in the photo at right, their household kitchen is very basic, and the whole home consisted only of one additional room. The entire village shares a toilet - so there is not much holding the youth to the village.

Although there were farming communities leading to the village (photo at right), the landscape in the hillside villages makes farming difficult. There is not really any farming in the village to speak of.

There were many crafts for sale - but most were not made by the locals, rather were brought in for sale. One exception seems to be the woven baskets - you can see the crop drying at right. But there aren't many on sale, so I suspect they make items for their own use. And since there is much more selection and better prices in the city markets, there seems to be little reason to buy from the villages. I suspect the 'sustainable tourism' they were hoping for is not likely to succeed.

We proceeded to Chaing Mai and visited craft making sites - lacquerware, silk making, paper umbrellas, jewellery making and wood carving. Some places did not allow photos, and they were generally quite crowded, so few photo op's -sorry!

In the evening, we attended a Kantoke Dinner with typical Thai food served in the traditional manner, and followed by dances and songs by various hillside tribes. Unfortunately, Mike had been downloading photos prior to leaving, and had forgotten to put the memory card back in the camera! So again no photos!!!