Climate-driven migration
In 2022, I won the European Geosciences Union science journalism fellowship. This allowed me to travel to Thailand’s mountainous Chiang Rai region in June 2023, to shadow a group of researchers conducting interviews about climate-driven migration.
These four days of fieldwork were a brilliant chance to learn not only about migration trends in Thailand, but also to see how on-the-ground data collection is organised.
The piece I wrote about my trip for Carbon Brief was shortlisted for a 2024 Future of media award – mainly due to the brilliant work of the multimedia team
I also spent months researching and writing an in-depth explainer on the topic, including interviewing a super wide range of experts.
In 2023, I spent a week in Thailand with a local research team. We travelled to rural villages in the mountainous Chiang Rai region, and interviewed farmers to learn about their perceptions of climate change and migration. This was an incredible chance to talk to villagers about their lives and livelihoods, and to see the fieldwork process first-hand.
The Carbon Brief multimedia team did a brilliant job of using the pictures and videos that I took to bring the resulting piece to life. But there was so much footage that we couldn't include everything in the article, so I also made my first video for YouTube. It was a pretty steep learning curve, but I'm really happy with how it came out, and hope to make more videos going forward.
The blog post below is an informal recap of my trip to Thailand. It is largely for myself, and is stuffed full of way too many unnecessary details! Please see my Carbon Brief pieces for the more concise versions.
Habitable
In 2020, climate migration expert Alex Randall gave a webinar about the links between climate change, migration and covid-19. The webinar was a brilliant primer for me on a topic which I knew very little about, and I wrote a blog post summarising it. Alex saw the post and reached out to me, and since then we have kept in touch.
So in 2022, when I had the chance to apply for an EGU science journalism fellowship, I messaged Alex with a very specific request: Did he know any research projects on climate change-induced migration, led by European researchers, with fieldwork teams that I could shadow?
It was a long shot – especially as I only had a couple of months to get my application in – but Alex’s answer was brilliant:
The team you need is the Hugo Observatory based at the University of Liège in Belgium. They’re completely focused on climate driven migration. They have a new project called HABITABLE looking at climate, migration and habitability which is pretty interesting…There is nowhere else in Europe that is doing research on this at the scale they are.
Alex introduced me to the HABITABLE deputy director, who welcomed me into the project, introduced me to the relevant team members, and helped me to write and submit my grant proposal in record time. A few months later, I was awarded the grant, and my climate migration work began!
My work began at the annual HABITABLE meeting in Rome in November 2022.
The HABITABLE team outside Sapienza University
Research projects about climate-driven migration often use climate models to determine which parts of the world are – or may become – “uninhabitable”. For example, they might set a threshold temperature, state that any region hotter than this is uninhabitable, and assume that everyone living there will move once the threshold is crossed.
The HABITABLE team approached the topic from a different angle, by exploring peoples’ perceptions of habitability.
Dr. François Gemenne – the principal investigator of the HABITABLE project – told me that the idea of “habitability” varies from person to person. He added:
“I’m really hoping that we can break away from the big numbers game where we try to predict how many millions people will be displaced in the long run and really understand at the individual level, which is the level that matters.”
A core part of the HABITABLE research is on-the-ground data collection in Sudan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Thailand. The work is organised into twelve (huge) work packages.
The team seemed aware of how collaborations between the global north and global south can lead to power imbalances. For example, Gemenne told me that typically, funding goes to researchers in the global north, who travel to global south countries for their research. “It creates an imbalance I think that is increasingly difficult to justify,” he said.
Gemenne seemed proud of the relationship that HABITABLE have with their global south partners, adding:
“All partners from the global south receive money from the European Commission in the same way that we do and therefore, they are no longer needed as subcontractors to conduct the field studies but they are fully integrated in the project in the redesign of the project. And I think this is extremely important.”
In June 2023, after months of planning, I travelled to Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand to shadow the data collection team for work package one – in which researchers surveyed thousands of people to learn about their livelihoods, migration history, perceptions of climate change, and thoughts on climate-driven migration.
Meet the team
Sawang Thongdee is an avid traveller, keen cyclist and coffee-grower. He was also my translator during my five-day stay in in Chiang Rai.
Sawang’s careful translations were invaluable during lengthy conversations with farmers and researchers. Rather than giving word-for-word translations, he would listen to full conversations, interjecting with the occasional question, and then summarise. For example: “They are talking about the corn crop. There were bad droughts these last few years. But I think they don’t know about climate change”.
Later, I sent Sawang a folder full of interviews, pictures and forms in Thai, and he translated the content that I needed word-for-word.
After listening carefully to my aims from the trip, Sawang gave me plenty of helpful suggestions, including interviews to conduct and photos to take. He also made sure to point out details I might have missed, such as offerings to spirits sitting on a wall, unique plants in a household garden, or the subtle differences in clothing between members of different tribes.
Sawang explained that everyone in Thailand speaks Thai – the country’s main dialect – but said there were also multiple different dialects and other languages. For example, many people that we spoke to used a northern dialect, he said. He added:
“There are certain ethnic groups or minority groups or indigenous groups who have their own distinct, different, totally different languages, and different culture… I am from the Karen tribe, so I have my own language which is totally different from any other languages.”
The day before we started the data collection, Sawang picked me up from my hotel with a handshake and a smile. This “western” gesture – unlike the bows that most Thai people seemed to use to greet one another – was my first sign of Sawang’s ease in different cultures.
(My Mum and I had arrived into Thailand the previous day, and were staying in a luxurious hotel in Chiang Mai. The lead-up to the trip had been pretty chaotic and I got very stressed as the date came up. My Mum offered to fly out with me and stay in Chiang Mai, while I travelled with the research team further north to Chiang Rai. Having her for the flights and knowing that she was nearby, made the whole process much less stressful for me. I’m so lucky that she had the resources to come out!)
Sawang and I climbed into the spacious, air conditioned car that he had organised, and greeted the driver who would be with us for the entire trip. (After a lengthy discussion with Sawang, I thought we had decided that I would not need a car or driver. But for a cost of just 2,500 Thai baht per day – less than £60 – it turned out to be a welcome addition.)
Sawang immediately checked that I wasn’t hungry or thirsty and insisted on taking some bags from me. (This attentiveness and hospitality turned out to be very common in Thailand.) I handed him a tote bag stuffed full of British tea, coffee and shortbread biscuits – gifts that I was planning to hand out liberally to anyone who wanted them.
An hour later, in the mercifully shady lobby of another hotel, I met Boonthida Ketsomboon and Thaowan Giorno – Raks Thai environmental program manager and environmental programme assistant respectively.
The Raks Thai Foundation is a “rights-based organisation” that had experience working on projects linking climate change and migration, and is the HABITABLE partner organisation in Thailand.
Boonthida immediately launched into a 2 hour detailed overview of the fieldwork, including the data collection successes and pitfalls so far across the different work packages, amendments to the original plan, and the villages that I would be visiting over the coming days.
Data collection in Uddonthani was done by the time I arrived, and the team had already ironed out a few problems with their initial method, Boonthida told me. I was here to see just a small part of the data collection in Chiang Rai, which included 32 villages in total.
As Boonthida spoke, she frequently turned to Thaowan to check things, or to ask her to email me further information later.
After months of emailing and Whatsappi-ng Thaowan to organise the logistics of the trip (and to get advice on everything from clothes to gifts) so it was brilliant to meet her in person! Thaowan quickly decided that she was my “older sister”, and resolved to teach me as much about Thai culture as she could during my short stay.
On our first night, she took me to a restaurant where locals caught shrimp from a big central pool, bet on their weight, and then eat them! (We just watched the experts at work, while eating our own meals).
And on my second day, she took me to a supermarket to buy Thai ice tea and show me the myriad of different crisp flavours on offer! (We later forced Sawang into a blind taste test of some of the weirder flavours.)
Thanks to her Italian-American father and Thai mother, Thaowan was able to switch seamlessly between Thai and American-accented English. On one long car ride later, she told me that she felt a similar ability to switch between her “western” and “eastern” mindsets.
Sawang - my translator in Thailand
Thaowan and I outside the entrance to a village temple
(She also offered me tid-bits into Thai culture – such as the country’s obsession with the lottery. If a car crash is shown on the news, Thai people will be looking at the registration numbers of the cars involved for lottery clues, she joked.)
Thaowan left on my second day, passsing the baton of “older sibling” on to Poramet Payaksatan (aka Dream) – a Raks Thai consultant, who took on his new role as with enthusiasm! (I soon learned that many of the team went by nicknames. Dream joked with me that his nickname is because he is “good” and “not a nightmare”.)
Poramet Payaksatan (aka Dream), centre, debriefing the research team after a day of data collection
Dream spoke some English, and we were able to communicate with the help of pictures and the occasional interjections from Sawang. Mainly though, we bonded through a mutual love of cats that needed few words to convey. Dream showed me pictures of his own cats – one of which was named the Thai word for “garlic” – and we delighted in petting every cat that crossed our path during our four days together.
The survey
The data collection process was way more labour-intensive than I realised. The team randomly selected 15-18 households from each village, and interviewed both the “head decision maker” and their spouse in each.
The “main” survey contained around 100 questions, covering topics including the migration history of household members, the family’s main income sources, their perceptions of climate risk, and their adaptive capacity. Covering all of these questions usually took around two hours. And then the supplementary spouse survey could be another 30-ish minutes.
But most of the hard work – building a relationship with the communities, training interviewers etc – had been completed before I even arrived in Thailand.
Tatchai Akkarawongwiriya (aka Dee) – a Raks Thai staff member based in Chiang Mai – supports the research team to coordinate and communicate with the target communities before the team starts their interviews.
“It is very important to build trust between us and the communities,” Dee told me. He explained that “strangers going into the communities to get information of the villagers would definitely create doubts and suspicions”, and said that the team instead went straight to the village heads.
Separately, Dream – who led the data collection team for some of the villages – said that it helps to train some villagers from the “target communities” to conduct interviews in their villages. This both builds trust, and means that the interviewers have a better understanding of the community, he explained.
Juam Krai village
Over the next four days, a good routine formed. We left the hotel at 8am sharp and went to one of many road-side restaurants for breakfast.
Breakfast options – the exact same as options for lunch and dinner – included rice, chicken, pork and noodle soups. I paid for all meals for myself, Sawang and the driver, but it barely scratched my budget, as you could eat breakfast for the equivalent of less than £1!
(British fry-up breakfasts are often too heavy for me first thing in the morning, but this selection of rice, plain chicken and clear broth was ideal! Since this trip, I have been eating rice and homemade broth every day for breakfast!)
Tatchai Akkarawongwiriya (aka Dee)
Driving to our first village, Thaowan and Sawang alternated seamlessly between chatting in English with me and Thai with the driver. I was very happy not to talk though, instead enjoying the dense greenery passing my window. And every now and then, someone would point out something of interest – a temple or a rubber plantation.
When we arrived at Jum Krai – a village of 50-60 houses – we went straight to the house/office of the village head. The solidly-built house had cars parked in the spacious front yard, around which dogs and chickens ran freely with full access to the road.
(I initially decided not to pet any animals, not knowing if they were friendly or clean. But gave up on this resolution by the end of the trip.
Breakfast on day one
Sign reading: “Village head’s office, Jumkrai Village, No. 9, Maeloi sub-district, Theong district, Chiang Rai province”
We sat at tables on the porch, and water bottles were handed out as the research team prepared their stacks of interview papers. Two local women from the region were helping as data collectors and needed to be briefed. Motorbikes leaned against the wall, and the wife of the village head sat on a rug on the first floor cracking peanuts.
As the team prepared, I bombarded Sawang with questions. He explained to me that “village head” is an elected position, and the house of the village head also serves as the administration office for the village. He added that a village can encompass multiple different regions, sometimes spaced up to 3km apart. The village head used a loudspeaker to share the information with the village, which Sawang said was a common practice.
I also learned that many farmers from this village had previously migrated from north-eastern Thailand, although I didn’t find out why.
The village leader soon came out to meet us. In the discussion that followed, which Sawang translated for me, the village head asked about compensation, and Raks Thai explained that development aid could be directed to the area.
Logistics settled, we walked up and down the road dropping off interviewers at the houses of their interviewees. Sawang, Thaowan and I followed interviewer Tanat Sai-inta (aka Josy) to the most brightly coloured house on the road.
The owners of the house, Chatchawan Jantarasodsai and Nuanjan Jantarasodsai, sat with us on the shady porch for the interview. Two hours is a long time to listen to an interview in a foreign language, so I floated around taking pictures and videos, occasionally dropping back in so that Sawang could update me with interesting additions.
Halfway through the interview, the couple brought out their “farming book”. In Thailand, farmers need to be registered with the government to allow them to – for example – receive compensation and support after a poor harvest. The village head stopped by to make sure everything was going smoothly, take a look at the book and give advice.
The couple’s main form of income is growing and selling longan – a fruit with a hard, brittle shell that can be cracked to reveal a prune-like inside with a large seed. The couple kindly brought out a bag of longan for us to try.
But the couple explained that thanks to a three-year drought, they were getting hardly any fruit from their longan trees, and were relying on money sent back by their children who were working in the city.
Tanat Sai-inta interviewing Chatchawan Jantarasodsai and Nuanjan Jantarasodsai; A longan tree and its fruit
After the 2-hour interview for HABITABLE, I had a chance to quickly ask a few followup questions. The wife did most of the talking, while the husband ate longan and interjected occasionally. (Clearly, depending on longan for their livelihoods did not dull their appreciation of the fruit!)
The couple explained that longan trees take 5-6 years to grow big enough to produce fruit, and that by 10 years of age, they can reach the size of the tree in their front garden. They treat the trees manure and chemical fertilisers, as well as spraying their leaves with hormones and other chemicals.
“If we look after them, they will produce a lot of fruits”, the wife said. However, she added:
“Drought can affect the fruits. They will fall from the trees if there is not enough rainfall… The rain pattern has changed, so it affects our trees and we don’t get any harvest.”
She added that the couple had hoped for a good harvest this year, but had no luck
I ended the interview by asking if the couple would consider moving if the weather continues to change for the worse? Their answer highlighted the dilemma at the centre of the problem – where would they move to? Their answer was inconclusive, but the husband suggested that they “might just have to try to survive” in the village.
(After the interview, the wife said I looked like a doll and asked for a pic with me and Thaowan. It was very cute! I wish I had taken a picture on my camera too.)
Immediately afterwards, I did a quick interview with Josy (who was wearing a shirt with a leaf pattern that – according to Sawang – he printed himself). Josy was a seasoned interviewer, having already spoken to eight or nine different couples. He said that most people he spoke to were in their 50s or 60s.
After the 2-hour interview for HABITABLE, I had a chance to quickly ask a few followup questions. The wife did most of the talking, while the husband ate longan and interjected occasionally. (Clearly, depending on longan for their livelihoods did not dull their appreciation of the fruit!)
The couple explained that longan trees take 5-6 years to grow big enough to produce fruit, and that by 10 years of age, they can reach the size of the tree in their front garden. They treat the trees manure and chemical fertilisers, as well as spraying their leaves with hormones and other chemicals.
“If we look after them, they will produce a lot of fruits”, the wife said. However, she added:
“Drought can affect the fruits. They will fall from the trees if there is not enough rainfall… The rain pattern has changed, so it affects our trees and we don’t get any harvest.”
She added that the couple had hoped for a good harvest this year, but had no luck
I ended the interview by asking if the couple would consider moving if the weather continues to change for the worse? Their answer highlighted the dilemma at the centre of the problem – where would they move to? Their answer was inconclusive, but the husband suggested that they “might just have to try to survive” in the village.
(After the interview, the wife said I looked like a doll and asked for a pic with me and Thaowan. It was very cute! I wish I had taken a picture on my camera too.)
Immediately afterwards, I did a quick interview with Josy (who was wearing a shirt with a leaf pattern that – according to Sawang – he printed himself). Josy was a seasoned interviewer, having already spoken to eight or nine different couples. He said that most people he spoke to were in their 50s or 60s.
He explained how climate-driven migration can lead to a missing generation in some villages:
“Some of the villagers shared with me about having to invest over and over again on agriculture but the crops fail and it forces their children or the young ones to leave the villages to find jobs. When old people who are in the village get sick there is no one to take them to the hospitals. The ones who migrate also don’t want to return home because they can’t make a living. This is something that impacts me personally, the point that when old people get sick there is nobody around to look after them.”
I hadn’t noticed this before, but once Josy pointed it out to me, the absence of people in their 20s and 30s seemed obvious. I thought that perhaps they were all out farming, but was told that everyone tries to farm first thing in the morning before it gets too hot.
Thaowan postulated that the “missing generation” could cause problems for children as they grew up, as they could not relate to the adults around them, and she suggested that this could even be a driver of the drug problems in Thailand. (But she also stressed that this was just her opinion!)
As we left, the village leader gave us huge quantities of bananas and mangos, and encouraged us to come back to the village after lunch so he could show us the “lookout point”.
We went for lunch at an amazing noodle soup-only restaurant only a short drive away. And then as the interview team went to visit the next day’s village and prepare the village head, Thaowan, Sawang, our driver and I headed back to the village.
Tanat Sai-inta (aka Josy) outside the house of the couple he interviewed
Based on the morning’s interviews, I thought the houses in the village were all dotted along the main road. But after lunch, the village lead hopped on his motorbike and started leading us through a grid of smaller roads, shielded from the main road and surrounded by houses.
A huge gold buddha greeted us at the bottom of a steep set of (apparently 300) stairs, and we got ready to get out of the car and walk. But instead, the village head made a turn and began guiding the motorbike up a sharp incline, hopping off occasionally to move branches and rocks to make room for our bulky car.
Up at the top stood the village temple, which I was encouraged to enter and take photos of.
After chatting with the village head, Sawang told me that he is a Buddhist. This is unsurprising, as Buddhism is by far the dominant religion in the country. But to my surprise, Sawang said that the village head went to a church sometimes to sort things out for the minority of Christians in the village.
Village head gifting us bananas and mangos; Couple on a motorbike; Lunch spot
As we drove home, we stopped by a park so that I could interview Thaowan, who was leaving the next day. (Despite the music playing from speakers throughout the park, and the unexpected sprinklers that turned on halfway through, I think I got everything I needed!)
We were back in our hotel by mid afternoon, in time to spend a couple of hours downloading and sorting the day’s videos and pictures. And after a (much needed) shower, the whole team went out to a shrimp restaurant for dinner. This was my most formal meal in Thailand, but still it took little over an hour for the multiple fish-based courses to arrive!
Juam Krai village temple
Dinner with the team
Huay Nan village
Day two began by driving to five different breakfast places to find one that could cater to Thaowan’s (flexible) vegetarianism and my (week) foreigner’s constitution. (Throughout the entire trip, Sawang made sure I didn’t use any of the condiments left out on tables, in case they made me sick!)
But it did not break our stride, and we still arrived at the second village, Huay Nan, in plenty of time.
The interview team outside the office in Huay Nan
We were given bottles of water, fresh fruit and sweets in a shady porch area and Dream briefed the team, reviewing what information they needed to collect for some of the trickier survey questions.
(I handed out some of the shortbread that I brought with me everywhere. Family had suggested that, with its tartan packaging, it would look suitable “western” and that people would like it. But I’m not that that anyone actually ate it!)
After the debrief was done, we were introduced to the the village head, and then set off to “deliver” all the interviewers to their respective couples. This trip round the village was an excellent chance for me to snap some pictures.
This village of more than 100 houses looked like the wealthiest of the four villages I saw. There was a huge range was huge, including some very well-built stone and brick structures. I also noticed many smaller wooden houses, some with corrugated metal roofs. But everything looked very clean and orderly. And super colourful!
Thaowan told me that if a house had a fresh coat of paint or a car parked outside, its inhabitants probably had at least one family member working abroad and sending money back home. It turns out that this flow of money, known as remittances, it a crucial source of income in many villages.
Sawang pointed out that many houses had loft areas, which originally would have been rice barns, but had since been converted into living spaces.
He also pointed out piles of what looked like rubbish sitting on the wall of one house, and explained that these were actually an offering to spirits. While most villagers are Buddhists, many also have the more traditional Thai beliefs, he explained.
I followed Wasana Panyadee (aka Gei) – an interviewer who was also the daughter of the village chief – to her designated house. The home belonged to a couple in their fifties called Boonmi Jantima and Kanticha Kammoon, and was one of the largest and most beautiful houses that I saw in the village.
During the interview, I learned that the wife owned the house and had lived in it her entire life. The couple have been rice farming on around 10 acres of land for more than 30 years.
I was surprised by the resources the couple had at their disposal. They explained that they hired people to work the fields, giving them large blowers, or even drones, to spread the rice seeds. In a normal year, they could bring in around 230,000 baht – more than £5,000 – from their harvest.
The couple explained that the rice fields were flooded roughly every five years, and said that last year was the worst they had ever experienced. As well as destroying the rice crop, the floods can also damage infrastructure such as irrigation channels, making these extremes very damaging.
Offerings to the spirits
Boonmi Jantima and Kanticha Kammoon being interviewed in their house, and their separate seating area
After their interview with Gei, I asked the couple whether they thought the worsening floods were related to climate change. Their answer was unambiguous: “Last year’s flood directly relates to climate change and global warming”.
The couple told me they have seen more extreme heat and drought recently, adding that the drought also affects the longan trees that they grow for supplementary income. The couple told me they are hopeful for the coming year, saying that because last years flood was extreme, they “don’t think it will be flooded again this year”.
(This idea that an extreme event could be a good sign, because it means that the worst is over, is a very intuitive one in a stable climate. But in a changing climate, it is usually not accurate.)
They also told me that migration is not on the cards for them. They explained that they have rice fields in other locations too, and that if needed, they could also open a shop, rent out their car, or sell insurance and lottery tickets.
This village was an important example of how money can give farmers options to adapt to the changing climate.
That evening, back in the hotel Sawang and I ordered takeout to the lobby. We ate amid the deafening sound of rain on the metal room, surrounded by huge flying bugs who were using the hotel lobby to shelter from the rain.
Rakstin Thai village
Our first two days of interviews were conducted in low-lying villages, but for the third day, we drove to higher altitudes. Sawang explained that in general, villages become poorer and less well educated as you travel up the mountain, because they are further from main cities.
As we gained altitude, the scenery shifted, and soon we were driving through vast fields of corn. Sawang explained that most of the land was owned by locals, but that they were obligated to buy the corn seeds and fertiliser from large corporations, and then to sell it back to them once it was ready.
Corn field
“Do the villagers get a fair price for the corn,” I asked doubtfully. “No,” scoffed Sawang. He provided no further explanation, and none was needed. (I remember my Dad explaining a similar dynamic between big agro and poor farmers in his home country of Uganda when I was young.)
We soon arrived at the village, which had more than 80 households and 400 people. As soon as we stepped out of the car, the subtle but unmistakable smell of manure hit me.
We met with one of the two assistant village heads, who worked to support the head of the village. We did the usual round of introductions, then we set off to drop the interviewers at their designated house.
Chickens, dogs and one adorable puppy ran freely around the village. Some dogs barked threateningly – possibly scared by my large tripod – while others wagged their tails happily at the sight of us.
As we walked, I saw houses with cars and motorbikes parked outside, a village shop, and an incredible range of edible plants growing in the village gardens of many households. Sawang pointed out the plants as we walked past them – holy basil, coffee, lime, lemongrass etc.
Nevertheless, this village was clearly poorer than those we had seen on days one and two. Most of the roofs were tin, and there were far fewer solidly built stone or concrete houses than in houses lower down the mountain.
Outside one house sat a sad rooster trapped under a basket and another (happier looking) one sitting on a rafter. Sawang told me that these could be for fighting, or they could be for taking into the forest, where their cries would attract more animals.
I sat in on the interview with the assistant head of the village, which was conducted in his house, as intermittent rain had broken out. The large TV in the background played the news – including the Met gala, movie clips and local news. These interviews were conducted in a local northern Thai dialect, Sawang told me.
The assistant village head explained that most people in the village grow rubber trees and mountain rice – which can be grown on hilly surfaces, unlike the more widely known paddy rice.
As well as farming, he said that he loans out his car and does carpentry jobs to bring in money. He seemed like a resourceful man who was keen to learn more skills. He explained that car and motorbike use in the village was increasing, so said he also had aspirations to also become a mechanic.
Given the mountainous terrain, flash floods are common but do not last long or cause extensive damage, he said. However, he warned that rainfall patterns are changing and droughts are getting worse, impacting the villagers’ water supply.
“We rely on the small upstream water sources and they tend to dry up in the summer months,” he said, adding that during a particularly intense drought two or three years ago, the villagers had been forced to pump up water from the main river downstream.
However, he did not think that it would be necessary to leave the village, instead saying that the villagers could adapt their growing times to suit the changing weather. For example, if the weather forecast shows that rain will be delayed a month, then the villagers can just plant their crops a month later. Besides, he said, he and his wife were settled here and did not want to leave.
He also mentioned that the villagers started growing rubber trees around 20 years ago, as these are more lucrative than other crops like coffee. (Rubber trees are also more resilient to the changing weather, Sawang noted, but he said this was not the villagers’ motivation for growing it.)
Pattarapong Tomrat, assistant village head at Rakstin Thai village, and his wife Pat
(Disaster struck halfway through the interviews, when the camera said it was full despite having only a few videos on it! I selectively recorded some sections of interviews and left out others. Back at the hotel later, a factory reset on the SD card fixed the problem.)
For my last dinner with the team, Sawang, the driver and I went out to a rice and chicken place. Selling only one dish for a set price, the entire meal took less than 20 minutes, and we were back at the hotel in under an hour. Truly amazing!
Phaya Lao-U tribal village
The final day was my favourite. I am so glad that it came at the end of my trip, when I was familiar with the camera, had fixed the SD card, and generally knew what to expect.
As we drove up the steep, winding roads to an elevation of more than 1,000 metres, the driver constantly honked his horn to warn any oncoming vehicles of our presence.
(Sawang shocked and impressed me by saying that these roads would be brilliant to cycle up! He is clearly a very serious cyclist.)
We soon found the sign showing the entrance to the village and pulled up. It was not immediately clear where the village started though, and we spent a good 10 minutes walking up and down the steep paths looking for someone to welcome us – giving me a chance to look around the surrounding area, and to meet a very friendly pig in a wooden pen.
Rubber tapping in the mountains
We eventually found a large flat expanse of dirt encircled by cars and motorbikes – the village car park and focal point. The interview team gathered here, and soon we were ushered into the village hall.
The village was large and the paths were rough, so the team had already decided that each couple should guide their interviewer directly to their house, rather than the entire interview team walking together around the village to drop people off, as we had done in previous villages. So there was quite a crowd of people in the village hall for the customary introductions and explanations.
During this introductory meeting, I learned that Phaya Lao-U is a tribal village, made up of around 150 Mhong households and 20-30 Akha households. In total, there are around 500-600 people in the village.
Sawang also told me that I could tell which tribe someone is from by the patterns on their vests. Mongh tribespeople have patterns just on the edges of their jackets, while Akha vests are more patterned throughout.
Sawang also explained that villagers usually speak their tribal languages to one another, and do not speak the northern Thai dialect. But (as did almost everyone in Thailand) they also spoke mainland Thai language, and so the interviews would largely be conducted in this language.
Introductions over, we filed out of the village hall. I walked with Patcharee Saehan – daughter of the village headman – and the Akha couple that she was assigned to interview at their house. Behind us, the mountains stretched off into the fog as far as the eye could see. Houses were dotted throughout the greenery, although I couldn’t see any clear paths to reach them.
I quickly realised why I hadn’t noticed a path. Nearer the top of the mountain, the “path” was more of a spiky collection of stones that had to be carefully wobbled over. But as we descended, the path grew flatter, to something that a motorbike could easily traverse.
As we walked, I was struck by the difference between this village and the other three I had visited. This was clearly the least wealthy. Some houses had roofs made of corrugated metal, but many others were thatched, and I was told that the upgrade from thatch to metal began just a decade ago.
(Panting as I trekked up and down the steep paths, I saw that Sawang was barely out of breath. I regretted turning down his offer to split my heavy backpack of camera equipment.)
A man from the Akha tribe wearing his traditional vest; Gathering in the village hall, and in the middle row, women from the Mongh tribe wearing their traditional clothes.
After we reached the couples’ house, the interview got underway and I decided to go for a wander. I came across a solid building which stood out from the rest of the village. The only other concrete building I had seen was build by the Singapore YMCA (according to a sign on the wall), so I was curious about this building.
I was chased away by a pair of angry barking dogs, possibly scared by my large tripod, before I could take a closer look. But looking back at my pictures later, I saw that the building was a church.
I asked Sawang about it later, and learned that many residents of the village are Catholic.
After their interview, the Akha couple kindly let me take their picture wearing the traditional clothes. The wife told us that she sewed the designs on herself. But she added that the pattern is not completely “traditional”, noting that with every generation, the patterns are changed to become more fashionable.
Village church; Mr A-Chong and Mrs Chanitra – an Akha couple from the Paylao-u village
After she had finished conducting her interview with the Akha couple, I had a chance to talk to 28-year-old Patcharee (the interviewer and daughter of the village headman) about the village, where she has lived her entire life.
Patcharee is a member of the Mhong tribe, but wore western clothes. She told me traditional clothes are important for holidays and festivals, but that many people wear western clothes these days.
She also talked about seasonal migration patterns in the village, explaining that workers from Laos – often in their late teens – often cross into Thailand to work on the rice fields or harvesting cabbage. Meanwhile, Thai villagers in their 20s often go abroad to Korea or Israel, where they are able to work and send money home to their families.
When asked if she thinks climate change may drive migration in the future, she said in- and out-migration will depend on the individual families. “What we have to do is wait and see the impact and see how can possibly adjust to the changes,” she said.
Interviews done, I had time to take some group pictures and play with three adorable (and friendly) puppies who came over to say hi, before finishing up.
My last day
We then drove (yes – drove) a couple of hundred metres down the road to a little restaurant. The modern-looking restaurant seemed a little at odds with the rest of the village. Although, when I went up to use the (squat) toilet I was greeted by an angry dog, pack of chickens and indifferent cow. Or perhaps bull?
And with, I said goodbye to the brilliant team, and headed back to Chiang Mai.