Lisu Village of Dton Loong
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Lunchtime and a cool breeze drifts up from the lily pond, rustling the shiny green leaves of lychee trees as I relax on a monkwan, an ingeniously designed triangular folded mat that when stretched out offers either a headrest or backrest.
Tiny black birds with red tails dart from pond to banana trees through the open rafters of the airy veranda where we are relaxing after two days packed with bike riding to hill tribe My family and I are at the Lisu Lodge, an award winning eco-tourist venture in the Lisu village of Dtn Loong in the foothills of the jungle covered Chiang Dai Mountains in Thailand. We are 50 Kilometres north, but a world away, from the bustling northern Thai metropolis of Chiang Mai. This used to be prime opium-growing country and the Lisu people were the acknowledged masters. Today, other cash crops are cultivated and adventure tourism is offering an alternative income. Fifteen years ago, the East West Siam Company decided to set up the Lisu Lodge as a way to enable Westerners to spend time amoung ordinary people of the extraordinary animist culture of Northern Thailand's hill tribes. Set beside a pond and stream amid a former lychee plantation and designed to blend in with the village, the four pavilions are built with steep thatched roofs, wide teak floored verandas, and woven bamboo walls. Each house has six double rooms with rattan floors and kapok stuffed mattresses set on bamboo sleeping platforms. Intricately embroidered bedspreads, mosquito netting from the rafters and en suite bathrooms, with solar powered hot showers and flushing toilets, complete the offerings. Meals are served on flower decked low khan toke tables in the spacious main room overlooking the open veranda. Guests are free to lounge on comfortable bamboo recliners on the veranda and wander the lush grounds, where an open air market is set up for villagers to sell their remarkable silver jewelery, musical instruments and embroidery made into bags, pillow covers, bedspreads and tablecloths. The concept was to help travelers meet the hill tribe villagers as friends no curiosities, and to gain an intimate glimpse into a unique way of life that these same travelers can help conserve by supporting a facility such as this. I am woken from my reverie by the noisy laughter of a couple of kids, one with a red hibiscus behind each ear, tumbling down the lawn with a gaggle of puppies. Meanwhile, Atar, the lodge manager and one of his Lisu staff have arrived with our lunch. We enjoy a spicy chicken soup, noodles with pork and vegies, and bowls of steaming rice. A fresh fruit platter follows. It turns out the kids are Atar's children, Atar (first son) Ami (first daughter). I begin to think I might even get a handle on this direct, no nonsense way of communicating. Early the morning before a lifetime away it seems we were picked up at our hotel in Chiang Mai by our friendly informative guide, Sow, and the driver in a traditional songtaew open-sided covered van fro the hour's drive north to Lisu Lodge. We stop at a market town to buy lychee's and grapes and marvel at the baskets of silkworms, mushrooms, chillies and myriad other foods we cannot identify.
Arriving at the Lisu Lodge we are struck by the Lisu's distinctive clothing. Everyone wears baggy pants, the men blue or green, the women in black with tunics in colours ranging from All are predominantly animists, who believe that spirits with powers over humans exist throughout their surroundings. But their language, dress and culture are quite separate as different as say, Italians and Spaniards. They nonetheless share common roots. Paying respect to the spirit of one's ancestors is a key component in encouraging the beneficial spirits. Ancestor shrines with food and drink can be found in all homes.
Our diminutive guide, Sow, brings out a selection of modern mountain bikes and helmets for the first leg of our "soft" adventure- biking along country roads between several villages. The air is warm and we meander at an easy pace, The Akha are smaller, darker skinned and more fine boned than the Lisu. The women wear broad-striped leggings, a short black skirt with a white beaded sporran and a loose black jacket with heavily embroidered cuffs and lapels but it is the silver headgear that is the most dazzling a silver beaded black cap topped with a conical wedge of solid silver interspersed with silver coins and topped with plumes of red taffeta. Probably the most outgoing of all the hill tribes, the Akha laugh and joke easily, vi Sow's interpreting, as they proudly show off their wares. We buy elaborately embroidered purses,mobile phone, cases, and water bottle holders designed with a clever nod to the modern world. Afterwards we are shown through the village, whose steep-pitched, thatched roof houses on stilts provided some of the inspiration for the Lisu Lodge. After an exhilarating whoosh down the hill we bike through a verdant tropical valley along side the rushing Mae Taeng River bounded by fields of winter corn.
Our songtaew van has been discreetly following behind and we stop on the bridge to load the bikes onto its roof before we head along a dirt road to the start of our rafting trip.
While we meander through calm pools we can enjoy the rolling green fields, but in the midst of three major banks of boiling rapids strewn with massive boulders, adrenaline
Then we climb a platform to mount our elephant steeds. We sit on a wooden bracketed chair that is placed over a wad of blankets on the elephant's bony back while the mahout sits astride the elephant's neck. Our mahout, Don, who has been with Pongull for 25 years, lives in a small shack beside her and will work with her until she dies. All his commands are in the Karen Hill tribe language, as the Karen are the traditional owners of elephants in the North.
We meander through the forest at a lumbering gait and stp at a platform where local children offer the elephants bananas. Continuing alongside another Lisu Village We follow him up to her shelter where he gives her food and settles her down for the night before introducing us to the newest member of the herd, a three day old baby who is shyly snuggling up to her proud 50 year old mother. Back at Lisu Lodge we recline on our monkwan mats eating dinner as a couple of Lisu dads play haunting melodies on pipes and Lisu banjos while a group of children perform some dances in the round. They are dressed in their finest outfits, the men and boys with silver bead encrusted black jackets and the girls in silver bead plated vests with gorgeous beaded, halo like hats adorned with flowing red streamers. They soon encourage us to join them, even though we feel very underdressed, and a lot of laughter ensues. Next morning we take an oxcart ride through the countryside, passing mandarin, lychee and papaya orchards and fields of corn, tobacco, ginger and eggplant. We explore the village with Sow, visiting the shaman's house for tea and corn whiskey and admiring embroidery and hand made baskets and breathtaking silver jewelery. Silver, most of which is melted down from Indian and Burmese rupees in a curious recycling of the British Raj influence, is the key manifestation of a family's wealth. The shaman shows us the shrine to Apamo, the guardian spirit of the village, with whom he communicates regularly. On our way back to the Lisu Lodge we pass a small Buddhist temple and a Christian church, both religions working hard on local conversations. I fantasize brriefly about making a reverse conversion, so long as I can wake up to the sweet morning air outside my bamboo window at the Lisu Lodge. I know, of course, that true believers don't have windows to prevent the bad spirits entering their homes, but being able to look out each morning onto that delicate lily pond surrounded by tropical foliage seems worht the risk compared to the insidious infiltrations of traffic noise and smog outside my glass windows back home. When to go: The best time to visit is during the less humid months of November to February when average temperatures range from 20 to 35 degrees. March and April are still pleasant.
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