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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

I went to Thailand on an Excite/Adventure tour in 1989. I was the only American in the group and it was mostly younger people.

Checking into the hotel in Bangkok as a single man, they just assumed I was there for sex, and asked if I wanted a girl sent up to my room (the answer was no, in case you're wondering).

We also trekked through the "native tribes" areas in the north, where the tribes had been "persuaded" not to practice slash-and-burn agriculture anymore, and made a side income from hosting tourists. Believe it or not, one of the tribes was called the Karens.

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The Karen (no S) you met were most likely refugees from Burma. For decades their lives have been very controlled by the Thai authorities, who use them as exotic tourist exhibits. The Thais don’t allow them to farm for themselves as they want to keep them dependent, subservient and profitable (I confer no judgment in the tourists who visit them as it’s complicated). So they tend to have secret fields in the jungle so that they can grow their own food and not suffer the whims of their hosts.

The Karen have long been one of the primary armed groups fighting for their own state and against Burma’s military junta. As a result they’ve been persecuted by the junta. Currently their territory has some of the worst combat in the ongoing civil war.

There was definitely some farming among the hill tribes, but I don't know by whom.

We visited one tribe that was considered Bad by the missionaries, so we didn't stay there. They were thought Bad because they all chewed betel nut and consequently had red mouths.

I'm not a fan of betel nut chewing, it's really unsightly & messy, but it's basically their equivalent of smoking. A lot of missionaries have odd ideas about how the people they are trying to "save" should behave. Some villages will play along in the hope of getting some benefit but others will have nothing to do with them.

>Believe it or not, one of the tribes was called the Karens.

I found a source for others since I know I didn't :-)

(It's apparently "Karen people")

>The Karen, also known as the Kayin, Kariang or Kawthoolese, are an ethnolinguistic group of Sino-Tibetan language–speaking peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people

There's a substantial Karen presence in MN now (I think these are Burmese refugees and not from the Thai side of the border).

Wonder what those areas were like pre-internet and pre-social media. Do you have a blog post or pics somewhere?

I think I have some analog photos, but I never scanned them in. Anyhow, there were five tribes, so I don't remember specifics about the Karen, and these might be about the other tribes.

Details: we were told to bring gifts for the women & children, but not for the men. For the women, only threads & needles for sewing. For the kids, just wrapped candy.

When we got there, the kids all got together and sang for us. Then they said, "OK, now you sing to us!" The rest of the group was British, so the only song they all knew was "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."

They had a big hut that the tourists slept in. After dinner, the women would bring out their crafts and sell them to us.

It's not true that roosters crow when the sun comes up. They crow when it's still dark.

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