Reesie
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Re:Empowerment of exploitation? - 2008/12/15 13:22
My take on the tours to the Padaung hill tribes in both Thailand and Myanmar is exploitation. The communities only get a small percentage of the proceeds, most goes to the tour operators.
If you go to a village, like I did in Thailand in 2003 (against my wishes), you'll see that most of the tourists go and gawk at the women, and take photos, perhaps buy something at the stalls where they sell identical fares. That last fact, in itself, shows the organisers aren't interested in setting up opportunities for the women to earn from the experience - else they would setup meaningful markets with differentiated items, still meaningful of their culture).
I can only speak for my visit, where I made a conscious effort to sit with one of the ladies and we chatted for about 40 minutes about her life - she was a refugee and made a difficult trek across the border - only to be put in this village where she was treated like an specimen in a human zoo. She didn't want to wear her rings anymore, a lot of women her age don't wear the rings. Furthermore, it isn't tradition that all women do wear rings - there is a lot of tradition behind the selection process.
Anyway, whilst we had a meaningful experience, she said no one had ever, in the three years she'd been there, sat down and talked to her before - no one had ever tried to get to know her before.
I felt good that I'd had an exchange with one person, sad that I didn't have time to talk with everyone. So in that sense, I felt my visit there had more of a negative impact than a positive one.
My travel partner just ran around getting photos.
Anyway, that is my experience. I personally think it is exploitation all the way.
PS - I bought two of her scarves at more than the price she was asking. It took her 2 whole days to make a scarf, and she was selling for about a dollar.
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