Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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A Model Weekend at
Lisu Lodge

by: Brian Hubbard

It's funny how things happen, isn't it? There I was on Thursday night in Darets, eating dinner and talking with Jeff Petry, an American anthropologist and writer of books on hilltribe people. He was telling me that Thai friends of his, who manage a place called Lisu Lodge, were looking for four or five farangs to spend this weekend, free, at the lodge posing as tourists for a photographer who was coming up from Bangkok to shoot photos for a new brochure. Was I interested in modeling?

Images courtesy of East West Siam Ltd.

10 o'clock Friday morning found me being whisked through Mae Rim and onward up towards Mae Taeng, and the promised delights of Lisu Lodge. Our driver was Kaigaew (Kai), General Manager of the lodge, and in the back were Ursa and Katrina, two Norwegian ladies who'd also volunteered as models.

Turning off the road at Ma Malai market we went deeper and deeper into rural Thailand, passing through villages and small clusters of wooden houses, past rice paddies, banana and bamboo groves and hillsides planted with hill rice.

By eleven o'clock we were at the lodge. To say that the view from the verandah is spectacular would be a small exaggeration, but what you do see laid out in a panorama before you is a lush green rolling landscape of rural contentment, spread so thickly across undulating hillsides and through half hidden valleys, someone had to have used an artist's pallet knife. And it's so quiet. Virtually the only sounds you hear are nature's; the wind through the leaves, the cicadas, the geckos, the tookays, the bird song and the gentle patter of rain on the grass thatch roofs.

The lodge itself is in traditional Lisu design, with six bedrooms opening out on to a central living space. I and my four companions were much relieved to discover that whoever had built this lodge had been prepared to compromise to a degree on Lisu authenticity, and had installed Western style, en suite bathrooms; sit down flush toilets and hot showers. Phew!

No sooner had we dropped our bags in our rooms, and before morning coffee!, than the arduous task of modeling was thrust upon us. Mick Elmore, the photographer, explained that because of the broken cloud cover he wasn't sure of getting good light later so he needed to get some shots in now. So, there I was sitting on the balcony with Ursa and Katrina, talking with a Lisu lady who was pretending to be taking an order for lunch, or something. "Keep talking to her", I was told. Well, within about five minutes I'd managed to exhaust just about all of my polite conversational Thai, most of which, to her credit, she'd understood. I, unfortunately, couldn't understand a word of her Lisu tongue spoken in reply, a real conversation stopper that, but we all managed to laugh a lot. Gavin and Joanne, a 19-year-old Lancastrian couple, had been placed at the foot of the stairs talking to another Lisu lady who was by now struggling with the subtleties of the Lancashire accent. But it didn't matter a bit, we were all having fun, and anyway whatever languages we were speaking, the pictures would all be in English!

After a delicious Thai lunch, Nooey, our Thai guide, took us for a walk around the Lisu village. It was almost extraordinary in its ordinariness.

Images courtesy of East West Siam Ltd.

The people there hardly bothered to look up as we passed by, just getting on with what they were doing, although they were friendly and smiling if we stopped to ask about something, through Nooey. A few villagers had things to sell that they'd made, embroidered place mats, dolls, belts, etc, but there was no pressure to buy. If you were interested, good, if not, mai pen rai, so be it. I know I was only at the lodge for three days but I gained the impression that Lisu are shy, almost timid people, and very polite, certainly to strangers and guests. I believe it would be very difficult for a Lisu to adopt the sales bargaining tactics of a trader in the Night Bazaar.

During dinner Mick was still photographing, and we were serenaded by a villager playing a Lisu lute. The slow, melodic, soothing music blending perfectly with the tempo of the Thai cuisine. After dinner, we were entertained by young couples dressed in the most intricate traditional tribal costumes, who danced a courtship dance and then a New Year�s dance of celebration. For the second dance the musician played gourd pipes. After the dancing finished, Nooey appeared with his acoustic guitar and we ended the evening with Thai love songs and some Beatles numbers that we all knew the words to. The end of a very relaxing and interesting day. I remember thinking to myself as I slipped between the sheets; if this is modeling then I reckon I can take the pace.

Seven o'clock Saturday morning and it's time for a photo call again, Mick wants to catch the early morning light and I can see why. This really is a very beautiful time of day.

By nine o'clock, after a hearty breakfast, we're up in the saddle - a mountain bike saddle that is - and off on the first leg of our trek. These bikes have twenty-one gears and I soon found the lowest three and stayed in them. The writer, you must understand, is a 49-year-old man who's devoted the last six years of his life to cigarettes, alcohol and long hours, abstaining whenever possible from any activity that involved exercise that wasn't hedonistic and horizontal. One and a half hours of up hill and down dale, through beautiful Thai countryside, soon convinced me of at least some of the errors of my ways over these last years.

Next came the elephants. A welcome respite after the exertions of the mountain bikes. The elephants set off into the jungle and then out and up to walk along the hillsides, sometimes on paths which probably only elephants could walk on.

Once you get used to the rhythm of the howdah on the elephant's back and allow your body to move with it, then it really is a very comfortable way to travel. You get to see the world from a totally different perspective, swaying along high in the air. Plenty of time to take in the spectacle of nature's architecture, as thick white clouds caress fertile emerald hills, while the river coursing through the valley, swollen with the first rains, spumes white turbulence over smooth, stoic boulders. And that was to be the third part of our trek, down river through the white water.

After lunch we set off in an inflatable, not a bamboo, raft. The river, we were told, was just starting to rise with the first rains, high enough already to make it interesting without being dangerous. All the same, we were all given lifejackets and helmets to be sure no one was going to drown themselves. Indeed, we soon found out just how deep the river was when we slid the raft sideways onto a boulder and Nooey had to plunge in to pull us off. The water came up to his waist! We went through five more sets of rapids and they were all scary enough to be fun. Further down the Mae Taeng it flattens out and meanders on at its own pace. There is always something so relaxing about drifting on water, using the paddle every now and then to hold direction and allowing the momentum of the current to carry you along. Lost in daydreams, no one talked very much. We drifted on until it was time to leave the river for a short jungle walk to our last destination, an Akha village.

Half an hour of easy walking through the jungle, that was the trekking part, and we reached the village. Nooey took us around, pointing out along the way some of the differences between this Akha hamlet and the Lisu one that we'd seen yesterday. He also talked about some of the differences in their cultural beliefs and life styles, too numerous to mention here but fascinating to know.

It was now around 3.30 p.m. To get back to the lodge we had a choice between another half an hour on a mountain bike or in the back of a white seelor. Unanimously, we chose the latter. Enough exercise for one day.

Once back at the lodge the hot shower worked wonders. Twenty minutes under its spray saw me emerge squeaky clean, refreshed and very ready for dinner.

This was yet another sumptuous flirtation with Thai cuisine, that more than sated appetites enhanced by a day in the great outdoors. We spent the rest of the evening swapping stories from today and travelers� tales from whenever. Nooey sang a few songs and, after a couple of glasses of Sang Thip, it wasn't long before we were all just about ready to retire for the night. A very pleasant end to what had been a truly memorable couple of days.

The combination of the lodge, the countryside and the Lisu people, plus all the fun activities, produced just the right blend of stimulation and relaxation to have everyone on Sunday morning, as we took our leave, saying, "Thank you, that was great, I'm really glad I came."

I'm really looking forward to my next modeling assignment."