Long Necked Tribe

The northern part of Thailand is home to many mountains, green parks, long history, rich culture. Deep in the mountains, often inhabited by ethnic minorities, they still retain the ancient culture and customs that attract the attention of tourists, especially the ancient people.

In deep forests in the northern outskirts of Chiang Mai, Thailand has a village of ethnic minorities, part of the village is a long-necked ethnic group. In that, the long-necked people make up the majority. The longan is of Burmese ethnic origin. They live deep in the jungle thanks to their cultivation, self-sufficiency. The women of the tribe kept the traditional custom of wearing a bronze necklace. A few years ago, in order to avoid domestic war, these people had fled from Burma to this day.

The living conditions of the people here are very simple, they mainly do weaving and making crafts to sell for money. They use copper rings for beauty and have the longest neck up to 70 cm long.

According to the custom, girls will start wearing a copper ring at the beginning of the age of 5. Each year will be placed a copper ring in the neck until the age of 25 then stopped. The maximum weight to carry is 10 kg. In the course of their lives, these rings are only removed three times, the first one is the wedding day, the second is the birth day and the last is the date of death, the rest must wear. In fact, these copper rings make their lives more difficult, as in the hot season to cool down the copper ring, when bathing, dressing must be clever ...

These girls have to spend their whole life here, it is difficult to get in touch with the outside world.
There are many different assumptions about the woman who wears a copper ring. There is a kind of hypothesis that use of this accessory is because the ancient people preferred the cult of ancient dragons. The second hypothesis is that this type of accessory can threaten tigers when they go foraging in the forest. The third hypothesis is that this accessory symbolizes beauty and wealth.

In fact, these bracelets do not have the effect of stretching the neck, which causes the shoulder blades to be squeezed and makes the outside feel that these women have longer necks. The woman in the "long neck" when removing these bracelets is at risk of breaking the neck because their neck bone is too weak already.