Hilltribe Museum — Attraction in Chiang Rai Province

Very confusing. On one hand, the film played at the beginning of the visit is very informative and points out the exploitation of tribes (especially longneck Karens) for tourism. On the other hand, they offer tours to see these tribes, including elephants riding! Claiming that if tourists don't ride the elephants, the tribes won't have money and will go begging homeless in Bangkok. That's ridiculous - the whole concept is misleading. It is an NGO introducing a birth control (hence the name Cabbage and Condoms for the restaurant downstairs) at hilltribes, so one needs to wonder what are their true intentions. We went in order to find out more about the hilltribes and to decide when to visit one, after the museum visit, we decided to skip that experience altogether. The museum and the NGO are fishy,to...

The museum was informative and had nice displays. It was small, but really doesn’t need to be larger for what it is. My only problem with it was the gift shop sold souvenirs for the gay bar on the bottom level of the complex. It was pretty upsetting to get the end of a culture museum, and as my children were browsing the gift shop, they had large graphic posters and other items of different condoms. It was not like kids seeing condoms for sale in little boxes at 7. It was much more graphic. What in the world does that have to do with hill tribe people? Can’t the restaurant sell its own items? If I wanted to expose my children to that, I would have taken...

The museum is interesting and cost-worthy, even though, as everyone said, it's not very up-to-date and could use some maintenance.

The main problem is their apparent contradictions that they could at least clarify. They adress the problems tourism brings, transforming communities into human-zoo and people loosing important part of their culture (for exemple their garment) because of the appeal of selling these objects and clothes to tourists. At the end, they offer you a tour to see those tribes as a human-zoo and sell you clothing items...