The poverty they lived in back then is clearly not something they are proud of or want to go back to. I don’t think anyone should begrudge them the desire to raise their standard of living, either. We have no right to keep people in a human zoo for our entertainment. As I said earlier, 40 years ago was interesting but I don't want to go back in time and don't blame Thais if they don't want to, either.

I have never heard Thai people wax lyrical about poverty, hardship, debt and low social status but it seems to be a frequent theme with some of the foreigners who move here to emulate the lifestyle of the least fortunate residents of this country.

Time marches on. In 1991 I think upcountry people were much happier because they didn't know they were poor. No televisions and farming was still done with the buffalo. In my area of Loei province there are still people who are not on the electric grid and who live hand to mouth. Even those people have iron buffaloes and motorbikes. They seem to get by although I have no idea how. These isolated farms are several kilometers off a paved road so it is doubtful that they will ever get connected to the electric grid. During the Thaksin era, he made available small solar power systems for people who were off the grid. Two small solar panels and a combination Leonics charger and inverter. One of my wife's relatives still uses of of these small systems. It runs several lights and a small black and white TV. It doesn't have enough power to run a refrigerator. They have replaced the battery a couple of times but amazingly the rest of the original system still works. I might add that they still love Thaksin. At least he gave them basic electricity which is more than any other government gave them.

Time marches on. In 1991. I think upcountry people were much happier because they didn't know they were poor No televisions and farming was still done with the buffalo. In my area of Loei province there are still people who are not on the electric grid and who live hand to mouth. Even those people have iron buffaloes and motorbikes. They seem to get by although I have no idea how. These isolated farms are several kilometers off a paved road so it is doubtful that they will ever get connected to the electric grid. During the Thaksin era, he made available small solar power systems for people who were off the grid. Two small solar panels and a combination Leonics charger and inverter. One of my wife's relatives still uses of of these small systems. It runs several lights and a small black and white TV. It doesn't have enough power to run a refrigerator. They have replaced the battery a couple of times but amazingly the rest of the original system still works. I might add that they still love Thaksin. At least he gave them basic electricity which is more than any other government gave them.

You nailed it.

They were much happier because they didn't know they were poor.

Many of them have the consumer goods now, but they've lost some other valuable things along the way.

I've lived here 30+ years, raised a family and seen a lot of changes... for better and for worse.

Thai people are messaged repeatedly from a young age by teachers, parents and monks, to be happy with what they've got (don't be greedy). The blessings of life, according to Buddhism. http://www.econ.tu.ac.th/oldweb/doc/article/fulltext/187.pdf

Dovetails nicely with the subsistence lifestyle.

Stay in your pre-determined swim lane, don't rock the boat, keep smiling and be "happy", while the higher caste fiddle around with more important things. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2645210?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

I've been to a few small villages still cut off from reality about 40-50km southeast of Nan bordering Maecharim National Park along the Laos border. They do have motorcy and some old pickups, but most work is still done with animals and there are no cell towers. One of the villages has no power (by choice from what I understand). When I went there with my fiancee (her family's roots are in these villages), the people were not used to seeing a foreigner at all, but were still extremely kind and inviting...we stopped at nearly every house to talk and have a shot of their local moonshine.

I honestly wouldn't mind living in a place like that. I live in a small rural village now, but since smartphones and towers got here 4 years ago, it's all gone down hill in a hurry....

I donot know about others but i am finding it hard also to find the old ways. It seems to me that Thai people are embarassed about their old ways.My wife's family appears to try and forget or leave old Thailand behind them. They all want to be cosmopolitan.When I show an interest in village life as my wife knew when she was growing up,no one wants to share what happened back then.or maintain that way of life.

When i first came one village would have one small black and white TV ran on car batteries.Now cannot find a village without wifi.

25 or 30 years ago they wanted to stop hillside tribes from being mobile and crossing borders as they always did. So now they are forced to live in villages permanantly and go to school and work at new jobs. Cannot even find a real hillside tribe now never mind the old thailand with thai ways.

The closest I can come is where I live . Our neighbours old village families and retain most of their customs,but their children are a different breed.The new ones are selfish,self centered,demanding,disrespectful,undisciplined,and lazy.

I apologize for wandering off topic and being of no assistance in your search,but I am fairly sure what you are looking for is gone.I too seek it but it evades me.

We still have an Akha tribe that lives in Phrae right at the border of Phayao and Nan. It is in the middle of the National Park, and more than 30km from the nearest paved road. I've been to it once, they have no English knowledge, have never seen a foreigner and most can't even speak basic Thai. THey are 100% off the grid. No TVs in the village when I was there 4 years ago, nearest cell tower 20km away and only 3 homes had solar panels for lighting. It was an amazing experience to say the least.

To get there we had a lifted 4WD Toyota pickup and still had significant problems getting there, having to cross 2 rivers and having barely more than a dirt path to follow for 30km.......I'm pretty sure they will not be on the grid anytime soon. There are only about 220 people in the village.

Village life here is a mixed bag of what you are talking about - yes, the kids do seem to spend too much time playing games on their devices - but I like to hope that maybe someday they will be using this as training for work that will likely be computer related. Yes prosperity has brought tractors and pick-up trucks but it has not muted the communal spirit that I see here amongst most. We live in a family compound and it is not unusual to come home in the evening to 15 people making bar bq and chatting. They work hard, they relax together and that includes the kids helping out too sometimes.

Any festivals and family parties are gigantic group efforts with often times 100+ people helping making the food.

And yes, I too was here 40 years ago and though surely some of the simplicity is gone, the world moves ahead. Just generally we probably all have to be careful to turn off the computer and enjoy personal interactions with friends and neighbors. You can live simply and still enjoy some of the pleasures of computers too.

And there is a village not too far away where they don't even seem to get cell phone signals. I doubt life is much different there as they can get easy access not too far away… so, I am finding a very nice mix.

Some small towns in Mae Hong Son Province. You have to get away from Mueang Mae Hong Son and head for the hills. The wife owns a resort in town, and we go there often. That area is supposedly the place where people are "happiest" in Thailand.

I suppose not connecting to TV would be a positive thing. As for myself...reading all the negativity makes me feel like I am riding on the clouds. (My life here is good !)

I do wish I could have been here forty years ago....I am kind of jealous that you had that experience.

I would say Mae Hong Son province also, especially as you get further from the towns and closer to the border with Myanmar, or into the interior. There are still a couple of towns which are only accessible by boat (or were 2 or 3 years ago) and the only electricity comes from NGO installed solar panels.

Sothern Tak too, below Mae Sot.

The mountains do a wonderful job of keep 'civilisation' at bay.

Get a few kilometers from any town in to the small rural villages in Myanmar, Cambodia, Lao and Vietnam (a bit further out for Vietnam) and you will be transported back to 1960's including unsanitary water supply, dengue fever, malaria, malnourished dirty kids running around with no or few clothes. No power, or constant power outages, dirt floors, no AC, no medical facilities, all local food, and beer (which may be enough for some guys,).

An old timers paradise!

I was charmed by the country folk and their simple but happy lives here.

Not everything that's called "progress" is good, but longing for a place and a time where people live in naive simplicity just to entertain your whimsy is patronizing, as if the people there were in some museum display or zoo exhibit that you could visit to chuckle at the backward days of yore.

It's debatable whether radio, TV and the Internet have had overall beneficial effects, but people, especially children, living absent those things would also be denied opportunities to gain greater knowledge of the world as it exists today and the skills & opportunities they might like to exploit for a better life in future.

Traveling back in time is a well worn fictional device ... from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to Back to the Future ... because it gives the audience a few chuckles at how primitive people were in the past and makes the audience feel superior because of all they know now ... but it is just make-believe and the people shown from the past are paid for their performances.

Edited January 12, 201610 yr by Suradit69

When im home in Thailand I live in a smaller town in north-east Yasothon. Do I qualify as living in "Old Thailand" if I pay for two internet connections - one at home, one in the shop - but get jack shit?

I live an hour away from Bangkok, and yes it still exists for the very low income. No TV, storing water in large jars, growing rice, raising chickens, planting crops, etc.

My postal dove is on its ................................................. no signal noooo ......

If you find a place like that don't tell Zuckerberg

http://time.com/facebook-world-plan/

The myth of 'The Noble Savage' was always a myth.Wife beating, incest, adultery, horrible superstitious practices .. I'm quite a cheerful bloke really.

I remember nearly 30 years ago in a village disco in Portugal three old guys trying to dance something that was obviously meant for four people. They were very bashful, almost ashamed to be doing this, I'm sure the younger were looking down their noses at this. Anyway, I joined in and learnt a few more dances, some of the younger ones even eventually joined in. I doubt that happens any more, it's old fashioned and boring.

What I mean is, one person goes to Bangkok for a year and comes back with a little prestige and money, and starts telling people what primitive savages they are, 'in Bangkok we do it like this'. Doesn't take long to undermine peoples' self confidence like that.

The pity is that an awful lot is being lost and nobody cares... stories, songs, dances, techniques, small tricks and get arounds to make life easier. Very few people around here could work a rice field using buffalo.

I learnt stuff in Switzerland 45 years ago that are no longer known to the younger generation of farmers, many of the tools I used are only to be seen in museums. Not one farmer in a hundred can use a scythe.

YES! And i am not telling where.

I'm sure there are such people, and places, but they can't read your post because they have ni internet.

I often wonder when I think it is too bad a place I liked for its rustic charm has become more modern, if I should be sorry the people living there have "advanced".

I have lived in old thailand in ... Burma

Only one way to find out.

If you have time get on your motocy and find out for yourself.

You will have the best time of your life.

We still have an Akha tribe that lives in Phrae right at the border of Phayao and Nan. It is in the middle of the National Park, and more than 30km from the nearest paved road. I've been to it once, they have no English knowledge, have never seen a foreigner and most can't even speak basic Thai. THey are 100% off the grid. No TVs in the village when I was there 4 years ago, nearest cell tower 20km away and only 3 homes had solar panels for lighting. It was an amazing experience to say the least.

To get there we had a lifted 4WD Toyota pickup and still had significant problems getting there, having to cross 2 rivers and having barely more than a dirt path to follow for 30km.......I'm pretty sure they will not be on the grid anytime soon. There are only about 220 people in the village.

I visited dosens of villages like that in Southern Burma (for research-sake), some only reachable by boat and then by foot or elephant (not even reachable by motorcycle or 4x4). It is indeed amazing but I'm sure none of us could ever live like that much longer than a few weeks.

Anyone who uses 3BB will think theyre in old Thailand cause their service is crap.

I go back almost as far as you do. But my memory is a little less rosy. There were certainly pluses, but also a lot of minus.

I remember villages with malnourished children. Villages with no access to health care. Villages with no access to clean drinking water. Villages where malaria was rampant.

And of direct personal relevance for expat lifestyle: really, really unrelaible electricity with frequent black outs

These things are gone and good riddance to them..

Yes, there have also been changes for the worse as well, and the greed and materialism that were always present among the upper classes have spread further within the society.

But it would be a mistake to imagine that things were idyllic back then...especially for the average Thai.

My wife's mother died and the step mother was as bad as any in a fairy tale, she got beaten everyday and had to bring water in a jar from the temple, about a kilometre away. She was pulled out of school after two years and sent to look after a kid a long way from home at the age of 9. She learnt silk weaving, as well as all the associated skills necessary. 'Harder than planting rice'. She then came home, her mother continued to be bad until she died, which was the only occasion my wife ever heard her say thank you.

Her husband died early when she had three kids and she was left with 8 rai to plant with rice, by hand, walking behind a buffalo, harvesting by hand. Second husband drank all her money, divorce. Sister dies in childbirth, she takes on the boy. Kids coming home from school, no food, they go to catch frogs, rats or whatever else is to be had.She then taught herself to read and write Thai and speaks and writes English better than most school teachers. She's great and much respected. (except by young kids that look at her traditional dress and shoes).

So we are talking about the good old days, right? They were the good old days because we were 40 or 50 years younger. Disease, hunger, people literally working themselves to death, little music or dance...

come on.

Well it's a sad tale but not everyone had a life like that.

My wife and her family all rice farmers, never much money but plenty to eat.

Social life was very good, lots of festivals at the wat, I remember the lam wong evenings where the local boys would buy tickets to dance with their favourite girl under the gaze of the family, the girls would shorten their sarongs to show a bit of leg, very innocent and charming.

No-one was upwardly mobile, everyone was the same i.e. farmers getting by but extremely happy. I never saw a happier bunch, they would sit around evenings talking and laughing for hours.

I guess I'm saying that despite the improvements in the income of most people, they work longer hours, don't socialise as much, borrow money to buy things and then have to work harder to repay them.

Children are nowhere as respectful as they used to be, that is the one thing that has really changed.

Anyway, as you say, those days are gone in most of Thailand, but I was just wondering if there were places where the modern lifestyle had yet to arrive.

Try some remote hill-tribe, Akha, Karen, Hmong, Lishu, Lahu....one that has no access to a paved road. far off the beaten track. Somewhere they have never seen a tourist...

Somewhere so remote you have to take spare fuel to fill up to get back....Somewhare they have only a couple of hours Electricity by generator...

yeah, those places exist in Thailand....

Best regards

I found this really old style place, but it's kinda tough to get to. First you need to find an old Delorean, then contact a Dr. E. Brown to do a few mods.

Edited January 13, 201610 yr by Norrad