Word: dais
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...TRAVEL The Dai's Homecoming Queen...
...TRAVEL The Dai's Homecoming Queen...
...TRAVEL The Dai's Homecoming Queen...
...after the seventh or eighth tumbler of rice whiskey that the tears began to flow. Nai Tong, the weather-beaten, gold-toothed village chief, blinked hard, splashed the whiskey jug around and raised his glass. "Welcome to Sipsongpanna, daughter of the Dai. Welcome home." It was a magic moment and the culmination of an emotion-charged journey for my wife, Sawitree. She is the first of her large northern Thai family to travel back to the land of her ancestors, the Dai people, who inhabit the southern tip of China's Yunnan province. The region is now known as Xishuangbanna...
...Siam. Why they left is lost in the mists of time?most likely it was amid turmoil as colonial powers bickered over the region, sandwiched between Burma's Shan states and modern-day Laos. They were following a well-worn path. For centuries, the Buddhist, rice-farming Dai have been tempted by the wide open spaces of Thailand's north, and have ventured across the Mekong to start anew. Sawitree grew up speaking Dai Lue, the main Dai language, which remains the lingua franca of many northern Thais...