Maesalong

I met this girl Asha at my hostel in Chiang Rai. She's from Poland and she's been living in Kunming, China (where I lived when I lived in china) for the past year. Now she's just down here backpacking in Thailand before she goes home. She mentioned that she was going to go up north to see if she could visit any of the hill tribe villages on her own without paying a guide the couple hundred dollars for the trek. I asked if I could tag along. 

So, this morning we woke up at the crack of dawn and trekked through the torrential rain to the nearest bus station stopping at the local market for breakfast. Our bus brought us to Maesalong a tiny tourist town in the hills somewhere near the Burmese border. We soon found a hostel for about a buck fifty a night which also had scooters we could rent for about three bucks and a map of all the local hill tribe villages. Soon we were on our way. 

The first village we visited was an Akha tribe village. The women wore black hats with pieces of silver sown all over them and colorful beads coming down around their necks. Their grass thatched houses we adorned with red and green chili peppers drying in the sun. As in every village the women had stands set up on the side of the road where they displayed the local handicrafts for sale. We bought some small trinkets and then moved on to the next village.

The next few villages were more of the same, grass thatched houses and women dressed in their vibrant native dress trying to sell their handiwork. The last village we visited was more of a market than anything but it was the only place we could go to see the Karen, or long neck tribe. The women of this tribe have golden rings wrapped around their necks from the time they are young, stretching their neck to the point of looking unnatural. I guess to them it is beautiful. I held one of the neck pieces of an adult woman and it must have weighed twenty pounds. They must have some intense shoulder muscles to  support that weigh twenty four seven. 

There were some other tribes represented at the market as well, each wearing dress more vibrant than the last. We got to watch them make their handicrafts, particularly woven scarves. It was a very cool experience.

After our adventures around to all the different villages we came back to our hostel for a late lunch. Thai fried rice--yumm.Now I think we are going to head out to the night market and see what the local town has to offer.