I have been living in Thailand since 1989. I have travelled
extensively throughout the Kingdom and wanted to share my wonderful
experiences of Thailand with others. I talked with many
travellers here in Thailand and saw a need to take visitors away
from the normal tourist areas filled with large tour buses and
groups. The biggest complaint I heard from visitors is “there is no
real Thai culture… it’s staged for the tourists”. This
is because they keep following each other around using their
guidebooks and never see the real Thailand.
In the course of setting up a travel agency here in Thailand, it
took about 2 years of research to find the areas that were safe and
could handle visitors. I spoke with village headmen, temple
Monks, Hill Tribe villagers, National Park officials and local bird
experts. I then had to train staff that would take care of
our clients with excellent service and provide correct information
about Thai and hill tribe culture, Thai food, Buddhism, birds of
Thailand, etc.
I lived in a remote area of north Thailand at Wat Thaton temple in
the town of Thaton on the Burmese border for more than 3
years. I taught English to Monks, novices, high school
students, the Thai Army, local and tourist police. I also did
hill tribe programs by taking a small number of tourists to hill
tribe villages to spend the evening. All the money for the
trek went to the villagers. I bought clothes for the
children, medicines and blankets for the families. I paid the
villagers to build a bamboo schoolhouse and paid a teacher to teach
Thai at the school who could speak their language. I taught
them how to dispose of waste properly, keep the children and
village clean and to use spoons instead of their fingers when
eating which was a big source of their health problems. I
provided vegetable seeds and logan and lychee fruit trees for
planting.
This was fine until I left the temple then the school stopped and
the health problems returned. I talked with the Abbot of the
temple and he now has a school for the children at the
temple. He has a nurse looking after the children and takes
those to the clinics that have problems.
While I was there I help start a guest home where travellers could
stay in a Lisu hill tribe village and go trekking in the jungle and
visit primitive hill tribe villages in the area. This was not
easy, as the villages we visited didn't want visitors as they
wanted to maintain their lifestyle and culture. They have
seen other villages that accepted tourists turned into a village
without harmony and their culture was gone forever. These villagers
were farmers and didn't want to look at tourism as a source of
income.
I understood the problem as I have seen what a tour operator can do
to a village. To most tour operators in Thailand money is first and
they don't care about the hill tribe people or their way of
life.
I stayed in these villages and met with the village headmen many
times. I learned about their culture, way of life, religion, and
do's and don'ts. We then came up with a plan that worked
out well for the villagers and our clients.
For the Jungle portion of the trek I had to teach the guides to use
different trails so it could grow back. They make a hut out
of bamboo and banana leaves for sleeping and I taught them not to
clear-cut and not to return to an area for at least two
months. No more hunting of birds or wild animals.
Without the local culture we would not be able to give our clients
the experience they are looking for. We also encourage our clients
in helping the local people we visit.
Next month, Randy talks about the difference between tourism and
eco-tourism, and provides us with some guidelines about the kind of
questions we should be asking ourselves when visiting Thailand or
going on any kind of eco-trip.
Randy who was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1948 has lived in Texas
for more than 20 years and in Thailand since 1989 can be contacted
by e-mail on: allthai@all-thailand-exp.com.
For more information on trips to Thailand, see: http://www.all-thailand-exp.com
