Tourism impacts on the authentic culture of Thailand and the Padaung people

·Tourism impacts for Thailand
Thailand has a strong belief in their culture, and Buddhism is a religion that dates back to many years ago. The Thais strongly believe in it, hence there are many temples around Thailand. There are some well known temples in Thailand, and Buddhists from all over the country and the world often come to the temples to worship the Gods.

Their local economy also increases due to the increasing number of tourists visiting Thailand, and many tourists have high spending power. Thus, the local businesses in the country make profits, and overall, the people living cities generally make more money than those locals living in the countryside. The standard and quality of living for the Thais will be improved.

However, there is a problem about the distribution of the economy profits earned from tourists. The government may not be fair in terms of distributing the money equally all the cities in Thailand. The more well-developed cities that tourist often go to are Bangkok and Phuket for example. Since these places are known for the high number of tourists, the government may spend the money earned from previous tourist spending on the redevelopment of these cities instead of developing less-developed cities like Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. Hence, the rich becomes richer and the poor becomes poorer.

·Tourism Impacts for the Padaung villagers
The Padaung people continue this tradition of wearing brass rings, because of two reasons. One is because it is their culture to do, and the other reason is because it is what makes tourists attracted to their tribe. Tourists are interested to visit their village just to see the women in brass rings. Hence, the Padaung people can make some money from the tourists when they come to visit their village.

Positive impacts:
The Padaung villagers earn some income from the tourists apart from growing and selling agriculture crops. This is because the Padaung people make art pieces and they are sold to the tourists who visit their village. Hence, they earn more income. Also, since their village is well known for their ‘long necks’, tourists go there for the purpose to see them, and the locals know this reason, so in order to keep attracting tourists to their village, they will try to keep their culture going. This leads to the preservation of the unique culture that is slowly fading.

Negative impacts:
The Padaung women cannot remove the brass rings once they have put it on. This is because the weight of brass rings pushes the neck done to the collar bone and ribs. This will result in the collar bones being twisted and is unable to go back to the original bone position. Since the bones are so deformed already, once the brass rings are removed, the neck muscles is not able to support the weight of the head and the person is not likely to survive for a long time. This is a challenge younger generations of Padaung women will face in the future, because the society is changing, and they may not like the image of them wearing brass rings. However, they did not have a choice, because most of them started wearing brass rings at the young age of 2 to 5 years old, and they had no opinions as their elders were strict on culture.