Yesterday I got on my motorbike and headed off to the hills above Chiang Mai, in the North of Thailand.
I briefly stopped at the Amazing Wat Doi Suthep, the most sacred temple in Chiang Mai, which incidentally has great views over the city, before carrying on past the Kings Summer Palace.
Up to the King’s Palace the road had been great, a broad hairpinned road, with occasional breathtaking views through the thick canopy of the jungle that lined the road, It was a lovely ride. However after the Kings Palace, the road became a paved rollercoaster of a track, just wide enough for one car. But this was a vast improvement to the first time I passed this way 10 years ago. Then the track had been an unpaved track, full of deep ruts and impossible to negiotate at any speed faster than a brisk walk. So I guess that’s progress!
The reason I was leaving all the tourists behind and heading into the hills was that I was going to revisit some Thai Hilltrbe villages that I had first visited over 10 years ago.
I had first come into contact with the Thai Hilltribes when I first came to Chiang Mai in the mid 1990’s. I would often meet Hilltribe women selling their beautiful, colourful embroidery in the famous Night Market and I was very interested in the different tribes, their origins, customs and embroidery.
We started buying their embroidery as we were keen to support their traditional folk art which was in danger of dying out in an increasingly humogenised world.
This led to us visiting different hill tribe villages, so that we could meet the women that actually did the embroidery. They were invariably old ladies and we were keen that the traditional embroidery would pass to the next generation, so we started links to different tribal villages.
The first village that I wsa visting today was a Hmong village, followed by a nearby Akha Village.
The Hmong are one of the most distinctive and widely dispersed ethnic minority groups in Southeast Asia. Originally from southern China, they migrated over centuries into the mountainous highlands of Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar — areas they share with other “hill tribes” such as the Karen, Akha, and Lisu. In Thailand they are concentrated mainly around Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces, living in villages at high elevations.
Hmong embroidery is perhaps the most celebrated aspect of Hmong culture — their textile work is considered among the finest folk art in Southeast Asia. Historically a woman’s skill at embroidery was a measure of her value and marriageability.
