Eventually, after our elephant had done its best to consume as much of the forest as possible and its mahout had given up trying to get it to take the slightest notice of him, Eloise and I were deposited at the small village of Nai Soi. One of three such villages in Mae Hong Son province, Nai Soi is somewhat controversial in that it is home to the so-called Long Necked Karen, or more correctly the Padaung. The Padaung are known for their tradition of wearing increasing numbers of heavy brass neck rings from an early age until their necks appear abnormally stretched, although this belief is actually something of a misconception. If their necks were really being stretched in this way, it would be as though they had been placed on a rack and their heads pulled away from their bodies - they would all be almost completely paralysed due to snapping of the spinal cord. In reality, pressure of the heavy brass rings on the collar bone and upper ribs actually disfigures the upper body so that the collar is pushed upwards at an angle and appears to be part of the neck. These days, you'll be pleased to hear, the wearing of the rings appears to be more of a personal choice than a requirement, although many still choose to do so because the tourists it brings provide a major part of their income.

The Padaung are refugees from neighbouring Burma, having originally migrated to Thailand in the latter part of the twentieth century in an attempt to flee the war raging in their own country and to rebuild their lives somewhere where their farms could flourish undisturbed. What they could not possibly have predicted was the intense interest the world would suddenly show in their presence, or the disruption this would ultimately bring to their lives. Having asked around the village, the general consensus seems to be that the origin of the brass neck rings is now lost to time. Some say that they are intended to prevent outsiders from being interested in their women, others that they were once a defence against tiger attack. It has even been suggested that the intent was to make the Padaung look more like the dragons of folklore. The general feeling from people I spoke to, however, was simply that the rings make them look more beautiful. Indeed, there is no doubting that many of the Padaung do appear beautiful to western eyes, but I'm not at all sure that this has anything to do with having three tons of metalwork around their necks. Whatever the reason for this extreme form of self mutilation, it starts at an early age - on their fifth birthday, children are given a single ring to wear around their necks, more being added as they grow older. Upon reaching adulthood, many women will have more than twenty brass rings crushing their shoulders and rib cage, and will no longer be able to remove them because the body will have lost the ability to support the head unaided. In fact, it is rumoured that removal of the rings was once a traditional punishment for adultery - sentencing the adulterer to spend the rest of her life unable to stand up and forced to lie flat on her back in a sort of primitive attempt at irony.

It is important to note, and this is something which most people you speak to will not tell you, that the Padaung are not really free by any definition you will be familiar with. As refugees, many of them are essentially under house arrest in their villages - they cannot come and go as they please, and live their lives trapped within the confines of a tiny section of rain forest. It could be argued that the Thai government takes advantage of this by sending tourists to their camps and encouraging the Padaung to be self sufficient rather than actually doing anything to help. The people of Nai Soi seem, on the surface, to be as happy as anyone else I've encountered in this part of the country - but this could well be a front. Unless you are part of a guided tour, it is normal to be expected to pay an entrance fee to enter the village, and the women all sit behind stalls hoping that a kind visitor will buy their handicrafts in return for a photo, so the term "human zoo" does seem quite appropriate. Despite this, it is sometimes difficult to know where to stand on the moral issues because everyone you speak to has a different story and even the Padaung themselves are at pains to tell you that they cannot imagine living any other way. Before long, it becomes impossible to know who to believe any more. As recently as 1998, it was reported that an international attempt to rescue a group of Padaung refugees who had been kidnapped by a Thai businessman and made to work in virtual slavery while tourists paid $5 a time to visit them was thwarted when the local police sided with the businessman and forced the would-be rescuers to flee in fear of their lives.

It doesn't help, of course, that the Padaung are often referred to in the west as the Giraffe women, hardly a name they would enjoy being associated with. The women here seem more than happy to pose for photographs, especially if you are kind enough to buy something from them first, but you have to wonder just how disruptive they really find the constant stream of western feet passing through their village as people gawk and point as though they are animals in a zoo. Life here never changes. At any one time, half of the Padaung women sit at their stalls selling home-made bracelets and chatting among themselves while the other half can be seen outside their huts slightly further up the hill, hanging out washing. Children run around playing in the dust, dogs lie in dark corners with their tongues hanging out, and there isn't a man to be seen anywhere.

In January 2012, the government of Myanmar (Burma) declared a ceasefire agreement with the Karenni, also known as the Red Karen, of which the Padaung refugees form a subgroup. Whether this will eventually mean that the people of Nai Soi and the other Padaung villages in Mae Hong Son can finally return home remains to be seen. The peace agreement is part of a package demanded by the west before sanctions placed on the Burmese government during the conflict can be lifted, so many eye this apparent stand down with suspicion. Already, reports are being heard that the Burmese government may be using the ceasefire as a smokescreen while it builds up reinforcements. The Padaung villages in Mae Hong Son are close enough to the Burmese border that their residents can look out every day at the hills which separate Thailand from Myanmar - a home so near and yet so far away. This is a story to which there is unlikely to be a happy ending anytime soon…

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.