July 16- Penang Malaysia

We flew safely to Penang this morning, but we have a lot to catch you up on from the last few days! Being with the organized group, it has been a little more difficult to find internet cafes (since we are staying in real hotels and not backpacker guest houses) but we are doing our best.

Since so many of us just finished "When the Spirit Catches You, You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman, I feel obliged to tell you more about our experience visiting the Hmong people. (If you have not just finished reading it, I highly recommend it to everyone to read! It is about the Hmong people living in the United States and the cultural barriers they face, particularly in medicine. The book also teaches you a lot about traditional Hmong culture.)

Anyways, when we arrived at the Hmong Lodge, we stayed in traditional/tourist Hmong style homes. Traditionally, these are stilted thatched huts that are just a few rooms big. The ones we stayed in were quite nice, had electricity, hot water, windows, etc. but the homes in the village that we visited were not quite as posh. The Hmong traditionally have lived high in the hills of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, although most of the ones still remaining in Asia are in Thailand.


Noi, our guide, talked to us a little bit about Hmong culture, how they live with their families, how they are agricultural people, and how they are in conflict with the mainstream Thai society on a number of fronts. The biggest problem that Noi talked about was how the Hmong are "slash and burn" farmers and they have destroyed a lot of the hillside forests. Once the farmland was no good to them anymore, they would simply pick up and move to a new patch of forest and turn it into farmland.

The King (who is very highly revered for his humanitarian projects across the country) has implemented many measures to try and help the Hmong be more sustainable farmers and to send their children to Thai schools. One of the things that he has done is introduce livestock to the hilltribes, and he has given many of the tribes hundreds of chickens, so that they no longer have to hunt. The idea was to provide them with a steady source of protein, and to make it more difficult for them to move around all of the time. He also introduced fruit and vegetable farming to replace the opium that the Hmong had been growing for generations and generations. The opium was a major "medicine" of the Hmong, so the king has built medical clinics for the people. He has also insisted that the Hmong send their children to school, so he built 100 new schools across the country, near rural hilltribes. He also paved the road and brought some electricity into the village that we visited. All of these improvements really raise the standard of living for the hilltribes, but we are concerned because many of these 'advancements' seem to dilute the intrinsic nature of the culture.


Noi also introduced us to the national sport of Thailand (other than Thai boxing). This was a combination of soccer and volleyball, played with a ball woven out of bamboo or plastic. The rules were the same as volleyball, but you were not allowed to use your hands. We played for a little while, before walking back from the real Hmong village to the fake one we were staying in.

We had a nice Hmong family style dinner, complete with fettucine alfredo and french fries. After dinner, we were entertained by some local Hmong 'performers.' We saw several traditional dances, a reenactment of a wedding, a musician playing a traditional instrument, a shaman performing a healing ceremony, and we even dueled with their large wooden tops. Ari won his duel, but it took Jillian 3 tries to even get her top to spin. It didn't spin for very long after that.


The next morning, we left our village and headed to an elementary school, 1 km down the road. All students in Thailand are entitled to 6 years of education until age 11, and after that the parents must pay. We visited several classrooms and played with the students and helped them practice their English a little. The Australians even sang them the song about the kukaburrow. (The kids may know how to spell that now, but we don't).



That's all for now, but we will try to get some more photos up soon!
Lots of love,
Jillian and Ari