Presley Museum and Travel News

More than 15,000 tourists arrive every year to this unique ‘people Zoo’ for photographing a group for ethnic Kayan women, known as ‘Female giraffe’ or Pandaung, Burmese name they hate.

Sitting with their huts they exhibit their long necks covered in bronze rings exposing to the curiosity of the visitors who captured images with their cameras.

The Kayan women, proud of their ethnic group and its culture, escaped in the 1990s for his native Burma when his people failed in an attempt to secede. They fled to Thailand and there settled with the consent of the authorities that allowed the refugee group a small commercial activity consisting in the sale of small crafts.

Very soon, the interest caused by the thick collars used to stretch their necks, attracted hundreds of tourists started to arrive from all parts of the world, which the tour operators took advantage and exploited as tourist attraction. An attraction that enslaved them for over twenty years.

And that the majority of women today, does not want to wear rings but they are forced to do so by Karen heads and Thais, forbidding them to leave.

The tour of the village is not free: men are responsible for charging the entrance and the benefits are distributed among the leaders of the tribe, tour-operators and the giraffe women barely perceive 40 euros of profit.

Given their status as refugees and with no land to cultivate for the tribe, this is their only source of revenue based, clear is in the unworthy condition of these women have no freedom to leave her.

This activity has been described as “demeaning” by several humanitarian organizations. The Office of the High Commissioner (UNHCR) works for years to try to move to the Kayan to other countries but the Thai Government puts serious obstacles. As this situation is not resolved, the UNHCR has appealed to tourists to stop them from visiting the villages in which the giraffe women are displayed as objects.

A point that moves between the need and human dignity. To think.