Ethnography for Backpackers
From the northern city of Chang Mai, backpackers can play National Geographic reporter/photographer. There are tons of companies that will take you trekking into the surrounding hills. Here you can sleep in a Karen Hill Tribe (Thai indigen) village. Pigs and roosters do their barnyard sounds right under your stilt-mounted bugalow. As you first walk through the Karen village, you feel like you are in some human zoo. But everyone comes out to the campfire. Some of the Karen bum beer off of the two Yanks in your group. They sing Karen songs. You’re embarressed when you find out that out of four Canuks and two Yanks, there isn’t one song you all know the words to. The next day you can’t believe you forgot about that farm run by Old MacDonald. Hiking through the hills makes you vow to lead a more active lifestyle when you get back home. One of your Thai guides walks at break-neck speed over rocky terrain in flip-flops. He doesn’t know what sweat is. But when he gets a little tipsy around the campfire, he makes up random songs to the tune of the Beatles “Let It Be.” The words are, “Waterfall, Campfire, Beautiful, Camping, Waterfall, Bar-bee-que, Camping, Waterfall…” You ride on an elephant. AN ELEPHANT!! The hair on the top of its head is like that of a wire brush. If you were to have your own elephant, you’d make sure that the seat/saddle has tassels. How else will you feel like royalty? Bamboo-rafting is cool too. You become slightly homesick for a canoe.