Thailand: Background information when reading Fieldwork

Thailand

This article relates to Fieldwork

A unified Thai kingdom was established in the mid-14th century. Known as Siam until 1939, Thailand (map) is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been taken over by a European power. A bloodless revolution in 1932 led to a constitutional monarchy. Thailand allied itself with Japan during WWII but has been an ally of the US since.

It is a land of many contrasts;endless beaches in the south attract tourists in droves. The capital city of Bangkok boasts state of the art transportation such as the elevated mass transit system known as theSkytrain and massive stretches of elevated roads that whisk traffic in and out of the city (I recollect that we traveled on one such continuously elevated road for more than 40 miles!); while down below the city bursts with massive shopping centers, countless Buddhist temples, modern housing and slum dwellings, interlinked by increasingly polluted waterways.

700 km (~400 miles) north of Bangkok is Thailand's second largest city,Chiang Mai, the background for much of Fieldwork. Further north still isChiang Rai, in the renowned "Golden Triangle" (where Burma, Laos and Thailand converge) which is a popular stepping off point for tourists wanting to visit hilltribes.

The Hill Tribes
The Dyalo people in Fieldwork are entirely imaginary but, according to Berlinsky, are based on a cross between the Lisu, Hmong and Lahu, with a touch of Akha added in. Hilltribe.org has plentiful information on the various mountain-dwelling semi-nomadic people, known as the hilltribes, who live across the borders of five countries: Burma (Myanmar), Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China.

An Aside: One of the most populous tribes in Northern Thailand are the Karen people, famous for their "long-necked women", a process where, from the age of six, the necks of some of the girls are stretched with continuously added rings. We were fortunate to spend a few days in the hill country of Thailand three years ago and asked our host at Cave Lodge about the long-necked women. We were told quite firmly that they never took their guests to the villages where long-necked women could be found because the practice has died out among the Karen people in general but is being kept alive in a handful of villages run as commercial enterprises by "lowlanders".

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This "beyond the book article" relates to Fieldwork. It originally ran in March 2007 and has been updated for the January 2008 paperback edition. Go to magazine.