Chiang Mai

From Lampang I went to Chiang Mai, the tourist hub for northern Thailand. Everyone that I've met whose been there loved it. I met a retired American couple in Lampang and a retired American man in Siem Reap who had gone to Chiang Mai for a visit and ended up buying homes there. So I was excited to get there.

And really disappointed when I did. It's a great town for ex-pats, with lots of Western-style restaurants, Starbucks, bookstores, etc. But it could be a town anywhere. It didn't feel like Thailand. It felt pretty sleazy, in fact.

There wasn't much I was interested in doing. It's the jump-off point for lots of outdoorsy type things like rafting and rock climbing, but the main reason people go there is to go hiking to visit the hill tribes.

There are groups of non-Thai ethnic groups living in the hills trying to maintain some semblance of a traditional lifestyle. But they've also figured out that there is money to be made by making themselves available to tourists. From what I've read, and heard from people who have been there, is that the encounters with these people feel staged (which they are), and that they are being exploited by the tourist companies.

For instance, there's one particular group that tourists love to see because the girls there wear a stack of metal rings around their necks. As they get older, they add more rings, so their necks become abnormally long. This obviously causes serious health risk, because the neck becomes too long and weak to support the head on its own. The practice was apparently falling by the wayside, until the tourists started showing up. Now the practice is back in full. I didn't want to contribute to that.

So everywhere in Chiang Mai you see travel agents with signs outside advertising treks to "Visit Longneck Karen", Karen being the name of the tribe. But I can't help but imagine a longnecked woman named Karen sitting in her living room watching TV while a parade of tourists passes through. Now THAT I'd pay to see.

Since time is becoming a factor, I decided to get out of Chiang Mai and head to Laos.