Hill Tribes of Thailand

Hill tribes of Thailand include a number of communities having different characteristics of their own. Thailand is one of the countries in Southeast Asia. Towards the east of Thailand is the Laos and Cambodia. The southern part of it is bordered by Malaysia and the Gulf of Thailand and to the west of Thailand are the Myanmar and the Andaman Sea. The capital city of Thailand is Bangkok.

The hill tribes of Thailand consist of about twenty or more ethnic groups who dwell in the northern parts of Thailand. A majority of these groups also survive outside Thailand, but the term is very much used in order to refer to the Thai groups.

The hill tribes of Thailand, in all, number at about 550,000. Most of the tribes in Thailand actually migrated to the country from Tibet, Burma, China or Laos in the 19th and the 20th centuries. The hill tribes of Thailand includes some of the major groups like the Mien or Yao, Akha or Thai Egaw, Karen or Thai Gariang, Lahu or Thai Musay, Lisu or Thai Lisaw and Hmong or Thai Meo.

The government of Thailand has opposed a few of the agricultural practices of the hill tribes of Thailand, mainly the growing of narcotic and the utilization of burn and slashes agriculture. The campaigns of the government against both these things practiced by Thailand’s hill tribes have came across some success. Some of the similar programs in Laos have been reasonably successful, and all these programs are almost non-existent in Myanmar. A majority of the hill tribe people in Thailand now make all or a part of their living with the help of the earnings due to the tourist industry, either with the sell of handicrafts or by hosting trekkers.

Most of the children in a number of tribal groups in Thailand are dressed in very attractive and colorful clothing and wear all sorts of valuable necklaces and bangles. The female members of the tribal population in Thailand wear headdresses, which are usually adorned with silver coins a number of other silver ornaments.

The hill tribes of Thailand are some light years away from the mass tourism areas of Phuket, Bangkok and Pattaya. These tribal people do lead a miserable life which puts them one foot on the stone age. It is found that some believe it to be the exploitation of their time and money and their own self by visiting these tribal settlements in Thailand. It is because some of the tribal villages have fondness towards alcohol. About twenty years back, the hill tribes depended on opium. The change from one addiction to another can not be considered an improvement, but the booming tourism industry in Thailand has helped a lot in the changing the condition of livelihood of the hill tribes.

The rescue of the hill tribes of Thailand is done by one of the delightful outfit known as Cabbages and Condoms. It is an arm of the non-profit organization, Population and Community Development Association or PDA of Thailand. This organization boosts the hill tribes to get the best use cabbages which develop freely in the mountain regions and the condoms which are provided by the PDA.