The Kayan Long Neck Tribe Charity Ride 2020.
An article by: Tom Stenshavn
Only 3 weeks ago, Thore and Sirilakk Pedersen started the project for the Charity to the Kayan Long Neck Tribe in Mae Hong Son.
3 week later, here we are, and we got 81.000 THB collected from good hearted souls all over the world, sending the money for this great event.
We provided the tribe with blankets for the winter, and also a lot of food for the more than 100 families in need in the somewhat cold mountains of Mae Hong Son.
There was a big gathering at Mad Dogs Bar in Chiang Mai before the ride, and we rode up from Chiang Mai on the 3rd with some of the blankets and rice, and the rest was purchased locally in Mae Hong Son. We rode up to the village and handed out the goods on the 4th of December and what a great reception the tribe gave us!
I even got my first Long Neck Facebook Friend, and she is the head of the tribe and was together with her husband the ones that calculated what to give to the different families due to how many there are in the families and so on.
After the hand-out, the tribe women gave us personally made silk scarfs and other presents to show their appriciation for our help. Really a touching moment for us all.
The Long Neck Tribe has NEVER to this date been given a big handout as today, and seems to be a forgotten people in the pandemic. We have to remember that the Kayan`s also live by tourism as they are an attraction in themselves, and they live of making handicrafts and sell it to the tourists that comes to see them. In these pandemic times, the borders are closed and no tourists allowed in to Thailand, so they were on the verge of staving facing the winter in the North-Thailand mountains.
PS: Big thanks to Steve Coupland for some of the photos
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