yes, these tribal people still exist. we went to a small Thai town near the Burmese border, and from there our guesthouse-owner's brother took us in a truck into the hills where this small community had set up a ridiculous display of scarves to sell to tourists.
i worry about ethno-tourism: do these people keep elongating their necks for the sole purpose of attracting tourists? their historic reasons might be outdated and they're simply frozen in some archaic image of what tourists want to see. i was shocked to see how deeply the industry penetrates these countries.
it was astounding, all the same.
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