Hill Tribes of the Golden Triangle
The Karen Hill Tribe in Thailand

By far the largest hill tribe of all the hill tribes in Thailand are the Karen, called Kariang or Yang in Thai language. The Karen hill tribe began migrating into the Golden Triangle in Thailand around the 18th century and number anywhere from 285,000 a 300,000, accounting for more than half of all the Thai hill tribe people.

The Karen hilltribe villages are mainly concentrated in the mountains of Mae Hong Son province and the western areas of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Phayao in Thailand's Golden Triangle along the Burmese border.

The Karen people like to settle in the foothills, living in bamboo houses raised on stilts, beneath which they keep their live domestic animals: pigs, chickens, and buffaloes.

Like other hilltribes in Thailand, the Karen are skilled farmers who practice crop rotation, using elephants to clear the land. The people from the Karen hill tribes in Thailand are famous to be the best elephant trainers or mahouts in Thailand and even in the whole of South East Asia.

Originally practicing ancestor worship and animist, over 30% of the Karen hill tribe people in Thailand have now been converted to Christianity by visiting western missionaries.

The Karen practice monogamy and look down on pre-marital sex with strict social community laws against immorality. Two married women cannot live in the same house. In the past, in some villages, punishment for adultery was death.

The Karen costume for women is very attractive and distinctive. Unmarried girls wear loose white V-necked blouses, decorated with tear-shaped beans at the seams. Married Karen women wear blouses and skirts in hard colors, predominantly red or blue, Men wear blue baggy trousers with red or blue shirts, a simplified version of the women's blouses. Black Karen men wear black shirts with a red cummerbund or head scarf.

Karen do not grow or use opium but have further developed the terraced rice paddy field system and small seal irrigation systems which they used for centuries. The Karen hilltribe people are a gentle, peaceful, and cooperative people, who, like all the Hill tribes in Thailand, reserve the highest veneration for their ancestors and living elders.