‘Long neck’ villages of Northern Thailand

We reached the longneck village, a living, breathing village, despite a vague hint of the fascinating long-necked people having to stretch their necks to preserve income from tourism rather than preserve the culture. We strolled through the village, un-hassled, and took our time to explore. It wasn’t a big village. No more than about 30 bamboo-woven grass huts, some on stilts. People milled around carrying out chores. Kids played in the dirt street. Not everyone had a long neck. Those that did were all women, mainly older women, who had set up little stalls selling hand-made scarves and other little trinkets.  One old woman with many rings around her neck stood in front of a weathered photo of what must of been her mother, also a longneck. A huge rainstorm forced us to take shelter under a stall’s canopy. There, we got talking to a woman called Ploy who used to be a longneck. Ploy too, used to wear the brass rings around her neck, one being added every year to stretch the neck (although what really happens is they squash the vertebrae and the collar bones by pushing down on the clavicle). Ploy told us she used to get terrible headaches all the time, so decided to break with tradition and take off the rings, something her parents didn’t agree with. As she’d been wearing the rings (or coil) for 5 years (which means she’d never taken them off – longnecks sleep and bathe with their coils on and never take them off), the muscles in her neck had gone. She said it took 6 weeks to be able to move her head with any speed from side to side.  Hers was an interesting story. Ploy was born in a refugee camp on the Burmese border, and is indeed Burmese she claims. She moved to this village at 5 years old. She doesn’t know how old she is , her parents don’t know either, but they can tell her the month she was born. She guesses she is about 26.