The Chronicles of Thailand (5)

Janurary 27th. Today we went to the hill tribes museum and the Night Market. The hill tribes museum was interesting, about the life and culture of people in various Thai Hill Tribes, kinda like Chinese Minorities. There was a big room dedicated to the Royal Family's work among the hill tribes. It was like what was everywhere. People really like and respect the king here! Anyway, it had everything from Meo and Hmong (which looked kind of Chinese) to the long-necked Karen (Karen is the name, really!) people. The long-necked Karen people...you know what I mean? The women have "stretched necks", done by fitting lots of brass rings to them to "stretch" them--actually, their shoulders are kind of pushed down or something. Anyway, it was interesting...there was one picture of a bunch of Karen people and there was this real little girl (or else it was a boy) with no neck rings, then a bigger girl with about four neck rings, and then there was a young woman and an old woman with about the same number of neck rings on..six or seven at least. There weren't any neck rings at the gift, shop, so we couldn't try an experiment on it. What there was were some cute little worry dolls--the belief is that you whisper your worries to them and then shove 'em under your pillow...in the morning they will be gone, taken away from the dolls. Mine is actually a zipper pull--I "fixed" it a bit. Yes, Mum and Daddy let us each pick out a worry doll. If I have to give mine a name, it will be Kanya.