Borderlines: Life in the mountains This journal documents my three months spent in the Doitung community in Northern Thailand, spending time with the peoples living in the mountains, hearing their stories of life under Chinese guerilla warfare, addiction to opium and forced work.

THAILAND | Monday, 24 November 2014 | Views [397] | View Smaller Image

Family ties are strong in the Lahu community. The villages are remote and often inaccessible to the outside during the rainy season. Since Thailand´s Princess Mother moved to the area in 1988, the area has become more open to the outside world.

Tags: lahu, doitung, mae fah luang, mountain village, closed community, family ties

Before 1988 this border with Myanmar lay completely under the control of drugs cartells based in the Burmese jungle.

This view is taken through the bamboo bars of the Thai army´s border outpost. Since the Princess Mother began her initiatives in Thailand´s Doitung mountain community, drugs trafficking has greatly decreased and the border is quiet.

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Where forests grow now was a barren landscape of slash and burn opium farmland as far as the eye only twenty years ago.

Despite the relative peace now, local rumours of continued nightly traffic across the mountains remain. Tribesmen and gardners charged with replanting the Northern Thai-Myanmar border remain afraid to go outside at night.

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Borderlines: Life in the mountains This journal documents my three months spent in the Doitung community in Northern Thailand, spending time with the peoples living in the mountains, hearing their stories of life under Chinese guerilla warfare, addiction to opium and forced work.

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