Long readsThe villages that charge admission

Several villages in Mae Hong Son province where Kayan women wearing brass neck coils live are set up to receive paying visitors. Whether to go is a question people answer differently, for reasons that are all real.

The facts that are not in dispute. The Kayan Lahwi are among the smallest of the Karen groups in Thailand; the women are recognised by the brass coils worn around the neck. Many of the families in these villages came from Myanmar, and their legal status in Thailand has been a long-running and unresolved matter.

The argument against going, as its holders make it: an arrangement in which people are paid to be looked at is not made better by the money, the visitors' fees have not always reached the residents, and the practice has been described by critics as a human zoo. Where residents' freedom of movement or right to work elsewhere has been limited, the choice to stay is not free in the way a visitor might assume.

The argument for going, as its holders make it: the residents are adults who have said in interviews that the income supports their families and that they would rather have visitors than not; boycotting a village removes the income without changing anyone's legal status; and deciding on someone else's behalf that they should not earn a living this way is its own kind of presumption.

Inference — what this project can do is decline to pretend the question is easy, and note that the two arguments do not actually contradict each other — one is about the system and the other is about the individuals inside it, and a person can believe both.

Not on this disk: current admission arrangements at any specific village, how the money is now divided, or the present legal position of the residents. Those are precisely the facts on which the argument turns, and this project has not verified them. Anyone deciding should look for recent reporting rather than relying on this page.