Our guide offers a free tour of a monastery the day after our official tour was over. We drove in his truck to a nearby town. Many trees had yellow bands in them. He said that that made tree sacred and thus no one could nail into it or harm it. He had told us about a more elaborate practice of the hill tribes we visited. When a baby is born, it’s father goes into the forest and ties the umbilical chord around a tree. It becomes the childs spirit tree and no one can harm it. Our guide saw both of these practices as a way to protect nature. The Thai government also has laws against cuting trees.
I asked him about vegetarianism and he told me this story from the teachings of the buddha. A family was starving in the desert. The father died so to stay alive the family ate his body. Then the mother died so the son and daughter in despiration ate her body. Finally the boy died so the girl had to eat her brother to survive. If you eat meat imagine you are the daughter who had to eat her father, her mother and her brother!
He said that a monk must give up money, meat and sex. The first was easy but the latter two quite difficult, although the hill tribe diet, had at most an ounce or two of meat and that might have been special for us.
He had other stories about the hill tribe people, each group being quite different,
There are tribes that are matrilineal and most are matriarchal.
In most tribes premarital sex is prohibited but in one it is encouraged. The girl throws a rock at the boy she wants and then runs away. He must run and catch her. Not being a fast runner I wouldn’t have done too well. This tribe also has a single man and a single women in the village who’s responsibility is to teach the girls and boys about sex, respectively. He said the girls only get one lesson but the boys more as their job is harder.
He also told us about one tribe that are still hunters and gatherers. They are rarely seen because they move their settlements often.